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READING HENRY HOBSON RICHARDSON'S TRAINS STATIONS:
THE CONTEXT OF LOCALE
Janel Elizabeth Houton
A THESIS
in
Historic FVeservation
Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in
Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
MASTER OF SCIENCE
1994
^^U*^A ^ • 2^-^^-^^^
George E. Thomas, Lecturer, Historic Preservation
Advisor
CclJc G^a^c/ l^JU*XCv^
Gail Caskey Winkler, Lecturer, Historic Preservation
Reader
^w\i di4Ma (^7.
David G. De Long, Professor of Architecture/
Graduate Group Chairman
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to thank George Thomas for his guidance and suggestions, and Gail Winkler for her
remarkable editorial skills and patience. Thank you to my father, who accompanied me to
the sites; along with my mother and grandparents whose support greatly aided me in the
timely completion of this paper.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS iv
INTRODUCTION viii
CHAPTER ONE:
RICHARDSON, OLMSTED. AND THE BOSTON & ALBANY
CHAPTER TWO:
THE RAILROAD SUBURB, VILLAGE AND TOWN,
AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SUBURB
CHAPTER THREE:
RAILROAD STATIONS 18
CHAPTER FOUR:
EXCLUSIVE SHELTERS 40
CHAPTER FIVE:
INDUSTRIAL CENTER, RURAL STOPPING-POINT,
AND ASPIRING SUBURB 79
CHAPTER SIX: PRESERVATION AND CONCLUSIONS 103
ILLUSTRATIONS 1 10
BIBLIOGRAPHY 145
m
ILLUSTRATIONS
1 . "Component Parts of the Boston and Albany System." George Pierce
Baker. The Formation of the New England Railroad Systems. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press. 1949.
2. Title page from King's Handbook of Newton. Moses Foster Sweetser,
editor. King's Handbook of Newton. Boston: Moses King, 1889.
3. Map of Newton and surrounding towns. Map of Bo.ston and the Country
Adjacent. Boston: Damrell & Upham, 1889. Harvard University.
4. Map of Newton. Sweetser, King's Handbook of Newton, p. 31.
5. Atlas showing Auburndale Station.Ar/ai of the City of Newton. Wards 9,
10, 12, 20. Philadelphia: Geo.W. & Walter S. Bromley, 1895. Harvard University.
6. Plan for Auburndale Station. "Stations on the Boston & Albany and The
Connecticut River Railroads." Railroad Gazette : 5 November 1886.
7. Plan for Auburndale Station Grounds.Charles Sprague Sargent. "The
Railroad Station at Auburndale, Massachusetts." Garden and Forest II : 13 March 1889, p.
124.
8. Photo of Auburndale Station. Frank Atkinson Arnold. "A Study in Railroad
Gardening." Suburban Life: May 1905, p. 22.
9. Atlas showing Chestnut Hill Station.At las of the City of Newton.
10. Plan and perspective of Chestnut Hill Station. Walter Berg. Buildings and
Structures of American Railroads. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1893, p. 276.
1 1 . Photo of Chestnut Hill Station. J.H.Phillips. "The Evolution of the
Suburban Staiion.^' Architectural Record 36: August 1914, p. 122.
12. Plan for station grounds at Chestnut Hill. Charles Sprague Sargent. "The
Raihoad StaUor\atCheslr\utH[\\."Garden and Forest II : 3 April 1889, p. 159.
13. Photograph of Waban Station. Charles Mulford Robinson. "Suburban
Station Grounds." House and Garden : 5 April 1904, p. 182.
14. Photograph of Station Drive at Waban. Newton Historical Society.
15. Atlas showing Woodland Station. Bromley, Atlas of the City of Newton.
16. Atlas of the City of Boston; Charlestown and Brighton. Volume 6.
Philadelphia: Geo. W. & Walter S. Bromley, 1885. Harvard University.
17. Photograph of Brighton Station. Robinson, "Suburban Station Grounds," p.
183.
IV
18. Photograph of the demolition of Waban Station. Newton Historical
Society.
19. Atlas of Welleslev Wills. Robinson's Atlas of Norfolk County. 'WeWtsley
Hills, Plate 35. New York: 1888. Wellesley Free Library.
20. Detail.
21. Photograph of Wellesley Hills Station. Jeffrey Karl Ochsner. H.H.
Richardson: Complete Architectural Works. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982, p. 401.
22. Photograph of Wellesley Hills Station. J.H.Phillips. "The Evolution of the
Suburban Slalion." Architectural Record 36: August 1914, p. 124.
23. Street (west) elevation, Wellesley Hills Station. January 1994, J.
Houton.
24. South elevation, Wellesley Hills Station. January 1994, J. Houton.
25. Map of the town of North Easton. OakesAmesMemorial Hall Association
and Easton Historical Society. The Architecture of Henry Hohson Richardson at North
Easton, Massachusetts. North Easton: 1969.
26. Lithograph of Ames Shovel Manufacturers, 1891. O. Bailey, Boston,
Larry J. Homolka. "Henry Hobson Richardson and the 'Ames Memorial Buildings'"
Ph.D. dissertation. Harvard University: 1976, illustration 9.
27. Plan for Old Colony Railroad Station. "Railway Stations at Wellesley Hills,
Waban, Woodlands, Aubumdale, Brighton, South Framingham, Palmer, Holyoke and
North Easton, Mass." American Architecture and Building News 21 : 2 February 1887, p.
103.
28. Detail of exterior of Old Colony Railroad Station, track side
elevation. January 1994, J. Houton.
29. Old Colony Station, carriage elevation. January 1994, J. Houton.
30. Old Colony Station, track side elevation. January 1994, J. Houton.
31. Outline Map of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with
populations in 1880. Rand Avery & Company, 1882. Harvard University.
32. Atlas of the city of Holyoke.Topographical Atlas, Count}- of Hampden,
Massachusetts. Palmer and Holyoke. Springfield Mass.: L.J. Richards & Co, 1894.
Palmer Public Library.
33. Atlas of the city of Holyoke.
34. Atlas of the city of Holyoke.
35. "Bird's Eye View" of Holyoke. Holyoke Public Library, n.d.
36. Map of Holyoke showing immigrant neighborhoods. Constance
McLaughlin Green. Holyoke, Massachusetts: a Case History of the Industrial Revolution
in America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1939.
37. Photo of the Connecticut River Railroad Station. Photograph taken by
M.P Warner Photo, Holyoke, Massachusetts, 1884. Holyoke Public Library.
38. Connecticut River Railroad Station plan. "Stations on the Boston & Albany
and The Connecticut River Railroads." Railroad Gazette : 5 November 1886.
39. Connecticut River Railroad Station perspective.'Stations on the Boston &
Albany and The Connecticut River Railroads." Railroad Gazette : 5 November 1886.
40-43. Photographs of the Connecticut River Railroad Station. January, 1994,
J. Houton.
44. Outline Map of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with
populations in 1880.
45. "Bird's Eye View" photograph of Palmer. Charles '^. Eddy. Palmer
Illustrated with Pen and Camera. Ware, Mass: 1 884.
46. Atlas of Palmer. Topographical Atlas, County of Hampden, Massachusetts.
Palmer and Holyoke. Springfield Mass.: LJ. Richards & Co, 1894. Palmer Public
Library.
47. Atlas of Palmer.
48. Atlas of Palmer.
49. Photograph of Union Passenger Station "Railroad Park." Pictorial
Palmer. Palmer, Massachusetts: Carpenter and Cady Publishers, 1896.
50. Plan for Union Passenger Station."Railway Stations at Wellesley Hills,
Waban, Woodlands, Aubumdale, Brighton, South Framingham, Palmer, Holyoke and
North Easton, Mass." American Architecture and Building News 2 J : 2 February 1887, p.
103.
51. Photograph of Union Passenger Station. Charles W.Eddy. Pa/^?2er
Illustrated with Pen and Camera. Ware, Mass: 1884.
52. Photograph of interior of Union Passenger Station. Ochsner, p. 265.
53-57. Photographs of Union Passenger Station. January, 1994, J. Houton.
58. Outline Map of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with
populations in 1880.
59, 60. Atlas showing South Framingham Station. Barnes & Jenks Atlas of
Framingham, Mass. Pittsfield Mass.: Jas. P. Beime, 1895. Framingham Public Library.
VI
61. Plan showing grounds of South Framingham Station. Charles Mulford
Robinson. "Suburban Station Grounds." House and Garden : 5 April 1904, 186.
62. Elevation and plan for South Framingham Station."Railway Stations at
Wellesley Hills, Waban, Woodlands, Aubumdale, Brighton, South Framingham, Palmer,
Holyoke and North Easton, Mass." American Architecture and Buildinfi News 21 : 2
February 1887, p. 103.
63. Historic American Buildings Survey Photograph of South
Framingham Station interior. 1959. Ochsner, p. .^22.
64. Plan for fireplace and mantel in station waiting room, South
Framingham Station. "Railway Stations at Wellesley Hills, Waban, Woodlands,
Aubumdale, Brighton, South Framingham, Palmer, Holyoke and North Easton, Mass."
American Architecture and Building News 2] : 2 February 1887, p. 103.
65-68. Photographs of South Framingham Station. January, 1994, J. Houton.
vu
INTRODUCTION
This thesis will explore the relation of setting to Henry Hobson Richardson's
Massachusetts train station designs, and their landscaping by Frederick Law Olmsted. It
seeks to illuminate the distinct relationship of place to building design and implementation,
and to suggest motives and aims of their corporate commissioners, building and landscape
designers as they relate to the users of these stations. The primary evidence for this study is
contemporary criticism found in magazines, journals and newspapers.
The first chapter briefly establishes those involved in the conception of the station
program; Richardson, Olmsted, and the men of the Boston & Albany Railroad who were
instrumental in the implementation of the program. The second chapter offers a short
account of the differences between Railroad suburbs, villages, and towns, and the
suburban development and transportation revolution that helped to created them. The third
chapter provides a short review of American railroad stations, different station typologies
and an introduction to Richardson's stations with a short account of the Railroad gardening
movement in America, and Olmsted's landscaping scheme for the Boston & Albany. The
fourth chapter discusses a series of similar towns and stations: Newton, Brighton,
Wellesley, and North Easton, and the fifth chapter discusses three different locations and
their stations: Holyoke, Palmer, and South Framingham. The sixth chapter ends with a
discussion of preservation questions, and conclusions.
A variety of sources provided material for this broad topic, but the list is hardly
exhaustive. Local newspaper accounts, town histories, contemporary railroad and
engineering journals provided the most telling clues to contemporary settings and
sentiments; local town libraries were frequently the only repositories for these materials.
Town atlases further enhanced attempts at understanding settings, and site and town visits
were valuable for reviewing current station conditions.
viii
Richardson's stations reveal much more than simply innovative architectural
treatment; they tell of corporate and private aspirations, town boosterism, and people's
desires and fears. They were developed as a result of very specific and meaningful social,
financial, and cultural relationships which could only have occurred at one time, and
location.
IX
CHAPTER ONE:
RICHARDSON, OLMSTED, AND THE BOSTON & ALBANY
CHAPTER ONH: RICHARDSON. OLMSTED, ANDTHH B & A
This chapter begins with an introduction of Henry Hobson Richardson with some
brief background information about his career and life, and follows with a discussion of
Frederick Law Olmsted in the same manner. Last is a short review of Richardson's
personal connections with the men of the Boston and Albany railroad, and its relevance to
the station commissions.
HENRY HOBSON RICHARDSON
H. H. Richardson was bom in New Orleans on September 29, 1838.' He attended
Harvard University, entering the freshman class in 1856, with intentions of studying civil
engineering. At Harvard he formed strong friendships that would prove instrumental to his
future as an architect, specifically with James A. Rumrill, the future vice-president of the
Boston & Albany, who would give Richardson his very first commission. It was
Richardson's stepfather, John Bein, who encouraged him to pursue architecture,
supporting him financially as he set off for training at the Ecole Des Beaux-Arts in Paris in
1859, where Richardson remained throughout the Civil War. Upon his return he first
settled in New York where he married and lived for some time in Staten Island. In 1874 he
returned to the Boston area in order to supervise the building of Trinity Church.
For their home, the Richardsons chose Brookline, an attractive and wealthy
suburban town, with prominent neighbors including Charles Sprague Sargent, Harvard
alumnus, dendrologist, and director of the Arnold Arboretum. Sargent was also a member
of the Boston & Albany board of directors and, along with James Rumrill, would be most
concerned with the railroad's construction of new stations in the 1880s. In Brookline
Richardson met and entertained some of the most socially prominent people of his day:
' For a 1 uller biography, see James O'Gorman, H. H. Richardson: Archilectural Fonnsfor an
American Society (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
2
clients, friends, associates and students formed one large circle, and provided essential
connections for many of his most important works. Though his professional career
spanned two decades. Richardson's work has been recognized by both his contemporaries
and modem scholars as having been distinctly different from anything preceding him in
American architecture.
O'Gorman makes the argument in H.H. Richardson: An American Architecture for
an American Society that Richardson worked "to create a monumental architecture
appropriate to post-Civil War America," and that the English and French sources he
struggled with initially were alien or inappropriate for these needs.2 This resulted in a shift
to another more distant source for inspiration, that being in the great stone monuments of
Romanesque Europe, forming an elemental core, a clay from which he could mold and
adapt his forms as needed. These were not the only places Richardson sought inspiration
from; New England and North American continental sources were also important.
Richardson seemed not to have a scholarly approach highly attuned to the fine points of
historic detail, rather, detail was subordinated to a whole comf>osition, which was
fundamentally the assemblage of large simple forms.3
With American society becoming progressively more delineated into urban and
suburban zones, Richardson defined respectively appropriate solutions to problems
presented with each commission. Fmding inspiration in sources from the continent, he
built upon these sources while avoiding mere mimicry, his answers varying widely
depending on site and function. Richardson can be seen as having worked in the vein of
Ralph Waldo Emerson's call for an American cultural independence, for new art forms
based on new sources of inspiration; influenced by American conditions, sites and
materials.
2 O'Gorman, H. H. Richardson, p. 53.
3 See O'Gorman, pages 91-1 1 1, for a detailed discussion of this.
3
The era following the Civil War was characterized by an American interest in
exploration of the West. This enhanced the cause of cultural nationalism with the
increasing visual testimony of the natural phenomena of the Rockies, Yosemite, and
Yellowstone as rivals to the man-made landmarks of Europe.-* O'Gorman suggests that
Richardson, especially in his collaboration with Frederick Law Olmsted, may have been
taken with the idea of turning the architectural image in nature and making it into a
geological image in architecture. The architecture at times certainly invokes such imagery,
the Ames Monument being one of the clearest examples. Around 1880 Richardson created
a series of houses for suburban and rural sites in the satellite suburbs and towns of Boston,
in which this natural imagery took precedent over history for inspiration, as at the Ames
Gate Lodge in North Easton and the Gumey House at Pride's Crossing. His domestic
designs of this period owed something to the work of W.R. Emerson. Richardson placed
great importance in the natural colors and textures of stone; the juxtaposition of natural and
man-made forms, the contrast of textures and shapes, and the resolution of building and
environment. Lewis Mumford called him "the last of the great medieval line of master-
masons."-'^
Richardson has also been loosely connected with the Aesthetic Movement, along
with the Arts and Crafts Movement in the United States. The two movements have been
seen as having stimulated the development of a novel way of planning and massing
volumes, initiating an unprecedented integration of architecture and interior design, and
creating a new sense of the importance of domestic, vernacular, and indigenous
architecture. The change in treatment of space and mass greatly distinguished the American
from the British Aesthetic movements, and the consequential effect on subsequent
■* O'Goiman, p. 94.
-■^ Lewis Mumford, SlicLs and Slones (New York: Horace Li\enght, 1924 (Revised ed., 1955])
101.
4
architecture is still felt. The new planning and massing of volumes eventually made
architects think in terms of varying room heights and levels rather than floors, in areas
versus rooms, and in movable partitions instead of walls. Additionally a new relationship
was formed between indoor and outdoor living spaces. Many of these characteristics are
typical of Japanese architecture, prints of which may have helped to shape these
developments.^' Richardson is characterized as the person responsible for introducing these
innovations in planning and massing, as well as other features of aestheticism.
FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED
By the 1880s Olmsted was regarded both in America and abroad as the nation's
principal landscape gardener. Frederick Law Olmsted was bom in Hartford, Connecticut,
in 1822. Becauseof childhood illnesses his formal education was intermittent; he studied
engineering and surveying, and attended some lectures at Yale University. With the help of
his father he established a model farm on Staten Island where his experiments would later
help him create his parks. He traveled to England to study agriculture, and visited Sir
Joseph Paxton's Birkenhead Park to see the open landscaped spaces incorporated into
urban fabric, and his travels in the Southern United States educated him about rural areas.
Part of Olmsted's great success and influence can be attributed to his ability to support his
ideas in writing.7
At the heart of Frederick Law Olmsted's work lay social concern. Olmsted saw a
need to develop and preserve areas of nature as a foil to urban density, having foreseen the
relentless development of urban America. From his youth he had derived a romantic
6 Richardson was also surely acquainted with Japanese architecture, and upon his death had a copy
of Edward Morse's book in his library , Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings, 1885. See James F.
O'Gorman, "DcK-umentation; An 1886 In\entor\ of H.H. Richardson's Library, and Other Gleanings from
Ptobaic" Journal of the Society of Archilectural Historians 4\ May 1982: 153.
7The information in this paragraph was taken from Leland M. Roth, A Concise History of
American Architecture (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1979) 143-147.
5
idealism, like many nineteenth-century Americans, that saw in unspoiled nature a great
source for the rehabilitation and rejuvenation of the human spirit, drained by the pressures
of modem life. Olmsted believed implicitly that a close relationship with nature was one of
the most necessary elements of human life. It was no coincidence that the introduction of
the landscape architect coincided with America's industrial revolution. As the world's
oldest democracy, it was the view held by Olmsted and his coterie, that America ought to
seek innovative responses for directing the physical landscape as a means for taming the
social problems of an urbanizing and industrializing nation. Olmsted did not retreat from
the growth of industrial America, rather his goals were a necessary corollary to that
growth. This was, in some ways, a test to see if a democracy that had been organized in
the eighteenth century to meet the needs of a rural population, could still retain the core of
Jeffersonian ideology for the new needs of urban life.«
The theme of democracy resounds throughout contemporary discussions of the role
and need for natural spaces in cities, and their developing suburbs. Social progress in
America could only come with the widespread advancement of its people, and not with that
of any single class or group of individuals. This emphasis on national unity was partly a
reaction to the frequently heard doubts and fears expressed by foreign observers such as
Tocqueville, Dickens, and Macauley. They questioned whether a consensus could be
achieved within a democratic system of representative government that included such varied
social elements as in America.
With the advent of much science and technology in the 19th century, it was a
common belief to hold faith in scientific analyses of society as a step toward the
amelioration of social ills. There exists a considerable literature from this time on crime,
alcoholism, p>overty and mental illness which places great emphasis on environmental
^The information from this paragraph was taken from Julius T. Fabos, Gordon T. Mildc and V.
Michael Weinmayr, Frederick Imv Olmsted. Sr. (Amherst, Ma.ssachusetts: Unnersity of Massachusetts
Press, 1968) 10-13.
6
cures. City slums were described as diseased urban tissue, suffering from deficiencies of
fresh air and water, sunlight, and open space. Until Robert Koch's demonstration of the
cholera vibrio in 1883, environmental planning was highly dictated by the primitive fear of
death from epidemic diseases such as cholera, small pox and yellow fever, that had so
frequently paralyzed cities.'^
Olmsted in his studies and analysis of the process of urbanization recognized that
the character of social and industrial life called for a functional separation of work and
home, which in turn demanded a physical division between places of work and residence.
With an increasing pace of life, particularly in cities, a new need for alternative
environments was bom, fulfilled in tranquil places for recreation; public parks, streets,
campuses, and hospital grounds.
Olmsted collaborated with H.H. Richardson on private residences, train station
grounds, the Buffalo State Hospital for the mentally ill, the North Easton Town Hall, the
Albany State Capitol, and a master-plan for Staten Island, New York. The ease of their
union was in part from their similar views regarding the design process; they saw a design
as the end result of an analytical, problem-solving process. '*'
RICHARDSON AND THE B & A
The importance of Richardson's connection with the men of the Boston &. Albany
cannot be underestimated, and was requisite to his receipt of the station commissions.
James A. Rumrill was a good friend of Richardson's since their days at Harvard.
Richardson had received his very first commission upon his return to America for the Unity
Church through Rumrill, and because of the success of this received additional Springfield
^This and the informalion in the preceding paragraphs were taken from Albert Fein, FrederickLaw
Olinsled and the American Environmental Tradition (New York: George Braziller, 1972) 28.
'^^he information in the preceding paragraph was taken from Fein, pp. 18-33
7
commissions, including the Western Railroad Offices in 1867 and the Agawam Bank in
1869, which had been founded by the one-time president of the B&.A, Chester Chapin.
Charles Sprague Sargent, another B & A board member, had also been graduated from
Harvard, and became a leading merchant in the East Indies trade. Like Richardson and
Rumrill, he had been a member of the Hasty Pudding Club. He served in the Civil War,
traveled in Europe, and then settled in Brookline. He developed an interest in botany and
horticulture, and became a professor of horticulture at Harvard from 1872 to 1873, and
professor of arboriculture from 1879 until his death in 1927.' ' In 1873 he was named
director to the new Arnold Arboretum, which was planned by his future Brookline
neighbor, Frederick Law Olmsted. Ultimately Sargent devoted his life to trees and forests,
and when he became a director of the B&A in 1880, it was only natural that he develop an
interest in railroad beautification. Beginning in 1888 Sargent edited and published Garden
and Forest, which spawned a national interest in arboriculture and forestry. Garden and
Forest also featured some of the landscaping programs of the B&A. When Richardson
moved to Brookline in 1874 his house stood opposite the Sargent estate, and the two men
became good friends. Their relationship was furthered by their shared admiration for, and
friendship with Olmsted, who would become their neighbor in 1883.
' Ueftrey Karl Ochsncr, H.H. Richardson: Complele Architectural Works (Cambndgc, N4A: MIT
Press, 1982) 242.
8
CHAPTER TWO:
THE RAILROAD SUBURB, VILLAGE AND TOWN,
AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SUBURB
CHAPTER TWO: THE RAILROAD SUBURB, VILLAGE, AND TOWN. AND THE
DEVELOPMENT OF THE SUBURB
This chapter will begin by distinguishing the differences between railroad suburbs,
villages, and towns, and the socio-economic differences of these entities. Following will
be a brief examination of the changes in transportation in the mid-nineteenth century that led
to the development of suburbs, and urban deconcentration.
CITIES, VILLAGES, AND SUBURBS
American railroads and their stations in the last quarter of the nineteenth-century
served significantly different purposes for different places, those divisions having been at
the time, primarily urban, suburban, and rural. Likewise, town development and growth
followed a radically different pattern around suburban commuter stations, industrial and
urban stations, and rural stations. Richardson's stations were meant to serve specific
groups, which was reflected in both station design and landscaping.
Industrial and commercial towns and cities were entirely dependent on the railroads,
and required that stations be located centrally to business. This meant easy access for
goods and in the case of passenger depots, easy access for workers-both middle-class
commuters (less often) and arriving laborers. These areas were primarily centers for
business or industry and were not considered desirable places to live except as sites for
lower-class tenements built for laborers and industrial workers. In these towns or cities the
upper-classes, if they were to be found at all, might be found within an outer ring around
the city or town, the downtown remaining accessible to these groups by carriage.
Richardson's station at Holyoke, which served an industrial location, will be examined
within this context.
Villages and small towns developed directly from the establishment of railroad lines
10
and stations and grew as a result. Usually the commercial area of a town, and industrial if
there was one, were situated around a depot, since the town depended on the depot for
shipping and receiving goods. Many villages also served as cross-roads to the east and
west, and depended on their livelihood to some degree on traveler's visits, primarily
businessmen. Frequently, in more attractive locations, resorts were established to draw
tourists. Residences were often mixed within commercial centers around the depots. The
less commercial and industrial activity there was near depots, usually the more residential
development there was, land there having been considered valuable and used quickly.
Richardson's stations at South Framingham and Palmer fall within this categor>'.
In suburbs an entirely different situation was presented. Stations built in suburbs
primarily served commuters, not commerce. When suburbs had grown from pre-existing
villages, depots might be situated around a village center along with post office, school,
and churches. Most of the time it was considered highly desirable to live within close
proximity to a depot, thus minimizing commuting time. Often when new stations were
established for the purpose of suburban development, streets and lots were arranged in
accordance with the location of the depot. In these cases, very homogeneous groups were
being served, usually upper-classes. If lower socio-economic groups lived within these
suburbs, their residences were located to minimize or prohibit contact with the upper
classes or their serving depots. Working-class members who lived in or on the perimeter of
the suburbs used the streetcar, not the railroad. ' The areas of town these workino-class
people lived in provided both employment in factories or mills, and accompanying
tenements or neighborhoods of them nearby, often provided by the industry's owners.
Only with widespread use of the streetcar would these lower-classes be able to afford
transportation for the purpose of commuting to work. Richardson's suburban stations
' ContempK^iran- atla.ses show that these areas were often hidden from most of the suburb, cloistered
off m an area where upper-class residents did not have to go to. Often mdustrv had long been established
along the n\ers, and stayed there.
were located in Newton, Wellesley Hills, Brighton, and North Easton (an anomaly), and
will be examined from this perspective. 2
SUBURBAN DEVELOPMENT
Only during the second half of the nineteenth-century did developers and
commuters grasp the potential of rail lines for suburbanization; the growth of commuting
far surpassed anyone's expectations. The rail system, especially the steam railroad, offered
not only accessibility, but inaccessibility, providing rapid access to the city center while
insulating its bourgeois ridership from lower-class invasion. Income groups were
distributed throughout the system according to how far they could afford to travel from the
center, and which particular line they could afford to take. Rail systems limited
accessibility in another way: since development proceeded along rail lines, commuters
usually lived within a fifteen-minute walk from a station. Also, the faster the mode of
transportation, the farther the potential for land development. Railroad villages were
created, having their own distinct identities, limited in size, and surrounded by open
country. Additionally, rail systems were most often radial (such as the B & A"s Circuit, to
be discussed) and organized around a hub, focusing the suburban communities toward an
urban center. Until the streetcar had a significant impact following the 1880s, working and
lower-classes were unable to take advantage of railroad transportation. In being accessible
both physically and economically to lower socio-economic classes, the streetcar would
become instrumental to the process of urban deconcentration.3
The "mobility revolution" did not occur overnight.-^ Like the revolution in industry,
2 While the station at North Easton could also be fit within the category of village, I have chosen
to evaluate it within the suburban category because its unique situation meant it served a purpose similar to
other suburban stations.
^Much of the information in this paragraph was taken from Henry C.Binford, T/ie First Suburbs
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985) 84-141.
■+Binlord, p. 84.
12
it affected different people at different times, and to different degrees. While a relatively
small number of people before 1860 rode omnibuses, trains, or horsecars, the activity and
changes initiated by those few soon changed urban geography at large. Early suburban
residents played a crucial role in launching change through a strong and persistent interest
in better access to cities. Until the mid 1840s, it was the peripheral residents and not
Bostonians who led the way in promoting advances in local transportation. > The rise of the
"commuter" contributed to this transformation. The word's origin lay in the "commutation"
of fares, a practice that reduced the price of tickets sold in package lots. This practice
began with omnibus proprietors in the 1830s and 1840s, but the word was coined later by
railroad and streetcar companies.^
As first conceived, trains had little to do with the suburbs, and were meant to be
links to distant markets and resources. The wealthiest and most powerful men of all major
cities initiated these massive ventures with visions of hinterland connections. The first
passenger railway in Massachusetts— the Boston and Lowell— opened in 1835 joining
Boston to the Merrimack Valley textile mills.7 From 1834 onward The Boston and
Worcester opened in stages, first through the Connecticut River Valley and then toward
Albany and the West.^ In the ten years time between the opening of the Boston and Lowell
5Binford, p. 84.
6 Binford, p. 89.
7Binford, p. 91.
8 Binford, p. 89. The railroad's progress in Ma.ssachusetts followed the national pattern. In the
1820s, proposals were being made to connect Boston w ith Albany; for se\ eral years before that there was
interest expressed in linking Boston and its port with the Hudson River. The Middlesex Canal joined
Boston to Worcester, but the new Ene Canal was draw ing off trade; some \ isionarics saw a Canal from
Boston to Albany. Advances in railrcxul technology enabled development to cx'cur, w ith Go\emor Le\ i
Lincoln endorsing a rail line in 1829. In 1830 charters were granted to the Boston & Lowell and Boston &
Providence Railroads, and the following year one was granted for the Boston & Worcester, eventually
becoming the ca.stem section of the Boston & Albany. Construction was begun on the Boston & Worcester
in 1831, opening from Boston to Newton (Needham at the time) in 1834, Needham to Hopkinton, and last
Hopkinton to Worcester, the entire 44 mile mainline opening in 1835. In Boston three train lines were
leading out of the city by 1835; the Boston & Worcester, the Boston & Lowell, and the Boston &
ProMdence.
13
and the arrival of the Boston and Maine, railroad managers experienced a complete change
in thinking about local passengers. Managers had originally envisioned carloads of
Vermont produce, Lowell textiles, and New York wheat, with no interest in local travelers.
An unexpected demand emerged for passenger accommodation, particularly in the suburbs.
It was not until the economic depression of 1837^2, when some train companies were
paralyzed with train lines half-built, that companies recognized passengers as an easy
source of revenue. The result was that between 1839 and 1845, facilities were rebuilt to
encourage suburban travelers. Then efforts were put into advertising, specially designed
and scheduled commuter trains were introduced, commutation packages became
obtainable, and suburban house lots were offered for sale.'^ This land was often owned by
either the railroad itself, or individual board members.
Towns competed to be included on routes. Some saw the trains suspiciously as a
tool of Boston domination, as railway entrepreneurs continued to resist local passenger
demands for some time. Trains such as the Boston & Lowell built its line on a route which
excluded existing population centers, and early trains ran straight through without stops,
largely suited to the needs of Bostonians having business at the mills. Eventually the
railroad gave way to resident pressures, and in 1837 Lowell established its first
intermediate station. 'O By the beginning of 1844 they frankly admitted a change in policy,
recognizing their own interests as well as popular demand. They claimed benefits included
the
The Western Railroad of Massachusetts formed the second component of the Boston & Albany
system. This hne was incorporated by the directors of the Boston & Worcester in 1833, with the mtenl of
providing a through route from Boston to Alban>' in order to divert bcxit and rail traffic from the Hudson
Rn er route, between Albany and New York City. By the end of 1839 the line had opened to the Hudson
Ri\cr. and was substantially complete by 1842. From then on, the Western Railroad served as New
England's chief ctinnection with the West.
9Binford, p. 89.
1 OBmford , p. 92.
14
accommodations it affords to a large population who had heretofore been
debarred from railroad conveniences; in the increased value of property in
the towns through which it passes, and the opportunity it affords to the
crowded population of the north part of the city, to avail themselves of a
conveyance into the country, where lands and buildings are cheap, in
comparison with other sections of the country in the vicinity of Boston. ' '
In 1843 the Boston and Worcester "Newton Special" arrived; the following year the
company sold house lots. • ~ As the Boston and Worcester encouraged the new commuter
lifestyle, they described a typical schedule as follows:
Persons residing out of town, & having business in the city are enabled to
come in on the morning train at 7: Go out at 12 to dine: Return at 2; and go
out to sleep at 5 1/4 or 7.1''
Old farms and estates were divided into large house lots beginning in the mid
1830s, and after the depression years, development continued in the early 1840s.'-* Before
the mid- 1840s, there was no massive out-migration of transit riding Bostonians; in the
early nineteenth century the mercantile elite only ventured into the suburbs for
entertainment, retirement, or burial. While there had been a limited amount of summer
rentals in suburban farmhouses and the very wealthy estates, the peripheral residence was
still seen as a kind of rustication, as well as a cheaper solution to the price of housing in the
city. Successful and active men resided in the heart of the commercial city.
By the middle of the 1840s, residential divisions formed two clusters of settlement
near omnibus and railroad lines. Boston merchants, local tradesmen and young
opportunists formed alliances addressing residential promotion that would shape suburban
growth throughout the rest of the decade. Commuters, along with land speculators and
suburban tradesmen, sought better access to cities while retaining a taste for city amenities,
'iBinford, pp. 92-93.
12Binford,p. 95.
'3Binford, p. 95.
l-^Binlord, pp. 96-97.
15
and worked to strengthen the suburban-city connection.
The full impact of the mobility revolution and the suburbanization of villages for the
upper-classes came with developments in the 1840s and 1850s, as various suburban
interest groups joined to strengthen local governments, making them agenciesof a new
kind of suburban growth. A second development resulted from a second wave of Irish
immigration. Crowding in Boston encouraged large numbers of people from the upper
socio-economic stratum to the suburbs, and between 1845 and 1860 the number of Boston
workers living outside of the city grew from a few hundred, to more than ten thousand. '5
This migration was part of a wholesale reorganization of the city. It was accelerated in the
1840s through rail-based marketing, factory production, and the arrival of immigrant labor.
Additional factors that helped to displace housing in the central city included the
construction of warehouses, larger offices, and railroad facilities. New transport
innovations would later culminate in the streetcar, which was to become a symbol for the
process of urban decentralization.
From 1845 until the mid 1850s, the suburbs experienced a mass exodus with
wealthier Bostonians fleeing the city. Boston writers, having earlier ignored the suburbs,
suddenly became aware of the number of "Bostonians" who lived on the periphery, and by
1850 both realtors and railroads were churning out propaganda in favor of suburban living.
An advertisement for the Boston and Lowell claimed
Somerville, Medford, and Wobum present many delightful and healthy
locations for a residence, not only for the gentleman of leisure, but the man
of business in the city, as the cars pass through these towns often during the
day and evening, affording excellent facilities for the communication with
Boston. Convenient tenements can be obtained at reasonable rates, which,
together with the low price charged for the Season Ticket, make it an object
of economy, as well a health and happiness, to reside in these places. ■(>
Excellent transportation was stressed by land developers, and schedules for trains and
l-^inford, p. 126.
• 6Binford, pp. 127-128.
16
omnibuses accompanied advertisements for suburban lots. Good transportation was not
the only requirement for the successful development of suburban land, and during the
nineteenth-century sanitation and power services became prerequisite for most homes.
The core of the transitional commuter population in the 1840s were wholesale
merchants, soon joined by bankers and lawyers. Tellers, bookkeepers and clerks as the
middle ranking staff of Boston's banks began to commute, but before the 1850s there were
many kinds of workers who had no place in the migration. Working-class families
dependent on crosstown transportation were usually the last to arrive in any suburb. ' ^
The suburb was defined by both what was included as well as excluded. One can
easily discern the fear of "native" Americans being overwhelmed by an immigrant wave
who, in their eyes, lacked their values. In this light the late nineteenth-century suburb can
be seen as an "Anglo-Saxon preserve", a safeguard where the true American family could
prosper and procreate itself, holding off the alien invasion; yet this group of elite also
included Northern and Western Europeans who wanted to appear, and live like Anglo-
Americans. ' ^ Landscaped leafy streets and comfortable homes were formed from both
aesthetics and prejudice; this Utopia was not for everyone, and antithetical to the American
democratic vision. The suburb was the classic representation of the bourgeois dream of
property, family, and union with nature— a dream built on fear as well as hope.
l^Binford, p. 134.
'^Robert Fishmanjiourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (New York: Ba.sic B<xiks
Inc., 1987) 142.
17
CHAPTER THREE:
RAILROAD STATIONS
18
CHAPTER THREE: RAILROAD STATIONS
Chapter three will begin with a stylistic history of American railroad stations.
Richardson's station program then will be outlined, followed by a review of typical station
typologies as defined by contemporary critics. The railroad beautification movement will
be discussed along with Frederick Law Olmsted's landscaping commissions for the Boston
and Albany.
THE AMERICAN RAILROAD STATION AND ITS STYLISTIC EVOLUTION
The form of the American railroad station was bom from a combination of
vernacular and colonial buildings; it swiftly evolved to display revivalist and hybrid styles
formed from architectural grafting. Trains often ran down main streets, and early stations
were sometimes simply the street comers themselves, with a small ticket booth provided,
or a ticket office established in a nearby shop. Old houses were converted, simple single-
room frame shacks were built, and inns and hotels were reused as stations. In 1866, a
hotel in Martinsburg, West Virginia, was transformed into a station, while in 1835
Washington D.C.'s first station was a converted house. ' Occasionally in the West, early
stations— such as one at Lariat, Colorado— were old railway cars removed from the tracks,
or built into a siding.2 In the 1840s and 1850s American railway capital and building
energies were focused on tracks and engineering, and it took some time for the stations to
catch up with companies grand schemes.
The first building constmcted expressly as a railroad station was Mount Clare in
Baltimore built in 1830, a small octagonal street-comer building akin to a toll-house, no
more than a ticket booth. In the 1830s and 1840s architects of stations in Baltimore and
Uohn M. MacKenzic and Jeffrey Richards,77i^ Railway Station: A Social History (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1986) 39.
^MacKenzie and Richards, p. 39.
19
Washington D.C. area used principally the Greek Revival and other classical modes. In
New England, colonial Georgian and Federal styles provided inspiration. Many early
stations were simple and large bam-like structures, a form used for several decades.
Railway architects of this time seem to have been interested in the notion of integrating
station offices with train-sheds. With the end of the 1840s a new and distinct type of station
appeared, in New Haven, Connecticut, designed by Henry Austin. The platforms lay
below street level and the buildings were constructed across a cutting; their style combined
Italian, Moorish and Chinese elements, and constituted a dramatic break with eariier
designs. From this time the American station would develop into complex hybrid forms,
particularly after the Civil War; stylistic influence would be more European than English or
colonial, with a recycling of different styles into Italianate Gothic, Romanesque, Queen
Anne, and Venetian forms. Verticality was increasingly emphasized, with towering
pinnacles in direct contrast to the horizontality of the railroads, creating dramatic landmarks
in cities— and replacing church spires. Many of the stations to emerge with the larger
developments of the 1850s and 1860s consisted of side buildings with trains running
through the interior in grand portals. Once sheds acquired separate buildings, a railroad
style was formed resembling Italianate villas with square, squat towers.
Following the focus on exterior design up to the 1870s, new attention was paid to
the interior arrangements of stations. Strong competition between railroad companies
initiated their interest in communicating their power, success and prestige to patrons. It
was also understood that travelers wished to depart and arrive in a grand manner; the result
was that many American stations had lavish facilities and decoration, often far exceeding
their strictly functional requirements. Stations could include concourses, restaurants,
shops, information centers, medical facilities, theaters and later cinemas, creating virtual
civic centers.
For larger stations, the Beaux-Arts style would come to embody grandeur. The
20
"office-block" station in the Beaux-Arts would totally supplant the eclectic styles of earlier
American train stations.-^ Designers may have felt that the Beaux-Arts scale and style was
ill-suited to smaller stations, since Richardson's stations and the Romanesque styles proved
a more popular influence, amenable to both small and large scale treatment.
Stations largely reflected the social tone of the areas they served, with more
prosperous locales investing more attention and money than others; places like Glen Ridge
in New Jersey had an elegant shingle lodge in 1887, and Tuxedo Park in New York had a
pagoda-styled building with steep-pitched roofs and fine woodwork.
Smaller Stations
For years the train station, or railroad depot as it was usually called, was the heart
of activity for most small towns where the railroad played any role.4 The suburban station
usually only offered a brief and fleeting impression to the tired, rushed commuters
boarding trains in the morning and rushing home to dinner at night; train travel quickly lost
much of its appeal for these people.
In some towns, and it seems in the early stages of town/railroad development
particularly in rural and suburban commuter towns, it was an advantage and considered
desirable to live close to the train station. However as towns grew larger, there was a
tendency for people to move away from railroad tracks so as to develop "'better" parts of the
town, away from the sounds and steam of the locomotive and noisy transfer activities. In
contrast, industrial towns often built the station close to the mills.
Nonetheless, the railroad station and its immediate environment was for a long time
a very important part of every community, often the town's most dramatic and forceful
center of activity.
-^MacKcnzie and Richards, p. 43.
■^George H. Douglas, All Aboard (New York: Paragon House, 1992) 269.
21
RICHARDSON'S STATIONS
Six of the eight stations to be examined were designed by Richardson for the
Boston & Albany railroad. In 1881 the Boston & Albany began a campaign of investment
and improvements on the line that included the construction of new passenger stations.
Considering Richardson's status as an architect at the time, and his friendship and
professional relationship with Rumrill, he was the natural choice as architect. Richardson
was given nine station commissions between 1881 and 1885. and Frederick Law Olmsted
collaborated with him on many of the settings, contributing to the establishment of a
program of "railroad gardening".
The commissions were clearly initiated by Rumrill and Sargent; they were diverse,
and included stations, other railroad buildings, and private passenger cars.-'^ The first
station Richardson was commissioned to design was for Aubumdale in Newton in
February, 1881, just after Rumrill had become vice-president of the Board of Directors.
The Newton stations, two commuter stations and three flag stops, were part of the Circuit
line. The second commission was at Palmer on the main line, (FIGURE 1 ) commissioned
in August, 1881. Chestnut Hill in Newton followed in April, 1883, then in the same year
the station at South Framingham— and for the Connecticut River Railway Company, a
station at Holyoke.6 Between July, 1884 and July, 1885, stations followed at Brighton,
Waban, Woodland and Eliot in Newton, and last at Wellesley Hills, on the mainline just
west of Newton. This was one of the last projects Richardson lived to see completed.
^Little is known about these commissions for private passenger cars. See Ochsner, Complete
Works, and James F O'Gorman. H.H. Richardson and His Office: Selected Drawings (Boston: Hanard
Unnersity Press, 1974).
^An employee of Richardson's office from 1880 to 1885, Alexander W. Lt^ngfellow Jr. ( 1854-
1934), apparently worked on a number of stations. A letter he wrote to his mother mentioned his work on
the Chestnut Hill station. Sec Jeffrey Karl Och.sner, "Architecture for the Boston & Albany Railroad: 1881-
1894." Journal ojllie Society of Architectural Historians XLVII June 1988: 109-13 1.
22
The constniction for the Boston & Albany stations was done primarily by the
Norcross Brothers of Worcester, Massachusetts. Active partner, Orlando Whitney
Norcross (1859-1920), was called Richardson's "Master Builder" by James O'Gorman,
since he was responsible for so many of Richardson's buildings. Norcross built all but one
of Richardson's B&A stations, the exception being at Palmer, which was done by W.N.
Flynt Company.
STATION TYPOLOGIES
Physical typologies for Richardson's Massachusetts train stations do not vary
significantly. Two contemporary accounts help sum up the critics' views at the time.
"Picturesque Suburban Railroad Stations" by Bradford Lee Gilbert appeared in Engineering
Magazine in December, 1891.7 He advised that
...nothing advertises a road better than tasteful station buildings; nothing
helps to attract and build up local traffic more quickly. In this age of
progress in railroad construction, it is not only in the end the most
economical, but throughout, the most advantageous and best paying policy
to provide the most convenient and best equipped stations for the public,
regardless of cost, considering also the questions of economic, efficient and
practicable service as paramount.^
Gilbert was critical of those responsible for "the erection. ..of buildings which are a public
nuisance and disgrace."
In many cases a 'penny wise but pound foolish' policy has been followed,
in utilizing the cheapest material and poorest construction, producing what
might be termed in politics a "mugwump;' or the buildings erected might
justly be criticized as being 'Queen Anne' in front, and 'Mary Ann' in the
rear, the exterior effect gained by expensive 'gingerbread' work, costing
more than if tastefully designed and properly executed by some competent
"^Engineering Magazine: An Industrial Review spcciali/.cd in scientific managcmenl, and in 1916
changed its name to Induslrial Managetnent. ceasing publication in 1933. See Frank Luther Mott, A
Hislorv of American Magazines. Volume FV: 1885-1905 (Cambndge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 1957) 321.
^Bradford Lee Gilbert, "Picturesque Railroad Stations, "£w^/«*'m«^ Magazine December 1891:
336.
23
architect.'^
Gilbert included illustrations of exemplary station design; included were examples
of stone stations at Laconia, New Hampshire, Evanston, Illinois, Bowenville Station at
Fall River. Massachusetts, Grass Lake, Michigan, a Gothic station at Ardmore,
Pennsylvania, and Richardson's station at North Easton Also shown was a station at
Acambaro, Mexico, of brick with accommodation for three classes of passengers, i <) A
southern station at Grovetown, Georgia, included a windmill in its design, and "class-
rooms for white and colored passengers." A large proportion of the buildings Gilbert
included were made of stone, which was the material least used for stations accordino to
Walter Berg (see below). Gilbert then described "general principles and requirements" for
the successful design of smaller, and suburban stations.
First, a station should be "designed in connection with its proposed location, the
actual requirements of traffic, the proper material most readily obtainable, and not to exceed
the limit of appropriation." Stylistically, whatever effect desired "should be gained entirely
by a bold, original treatment, suitable to the surroundings and conditions, and by means of
constructional outlines and a graceful contour, not by ornamental or 'fancy' detail woric."
No matter what material used, it should be "first-class," and appropriate to the locality.
Ground plans should be determined by the number of users, probable growth of the
area, and the number of trains daily. While room arrangement could be quite variable, he
offered a few general suggestions. Women (Gilbert preferred this term saying "let us
discard using the much abused word 'lady' in connection with public buildings") should
always have some private area; if a separate women's room was not possible, a smaller one
aside a general waiting room, with the bathroom, should be provided. Men should have a
^Gilbert, p. 336-337.
' 0 See Chapter 5 lor ihc discussion of the Holyoke station for an example of class segregation in
Amencan station plans.
24
separate smoking room apart from the general waiting room, since smoke often "becomes
exceedingly objectionable to men who do not smoke. ..and a good 'smoke' attracts the least
desirable element (laborers, hackmen, etc)." In addition, "Large pleasant open fireplaces,
of tasteful design" were advised, for use on chilly, damp days and also for ventilation.
Another suggestion was that "Isjmall alcoves arranged off the general waiting-rooms, by
means of screens, are much appreciated for the convenience and privacy of wedding or
funeral parties." ' •
Ticket offices were best located on the track-side of the building, in a projecting
window that allowed views of all tracks, and elevated so as to see over standing
passengers. This would allow for one agent to handle both tickets and telegraphs. Berg
suggested that offices should have "ample light and generous counters". Baggage rooms
should be easily accessible and a small mail-room was desirable, as well as rooms for
conductors, trainmen, and restaurant accommodations. Plumbing and sanitary work,
heating and ventilation "should be first-class in every particular." Marble and slate floors
and walls for dressing rooms, while expensive, were recommended as a good investment.
"Ample provision should be made for covered concrete platforms", extending around the
building, wide enough to accommodate both passengers and baggage. Accommodation for
carriage traffic was recommended, with either projected awnings or "a generous por/e-
coc/j^re." 12
'WaherBergs Buikiings and Structures of American Railroads, (1893) was an
extensive account and critique of American station design, categorizing buildings into
typologies, two of which suited Richardson's station variations: "flag depots" and "local
passenger depots." Many of Berg's suggestions echoed Gilbert's. Berg devoted one
chapter to "Flag Depots", described as:
llGilbert, p. 348.
' 2The quotes listed in the preceding paragraphs were taken from Gilbert, pp. 336-349.
25
Flag-stations on railroads are stations of minor importance at which only a
limited number of trains stop.-usually on flag; hence, the name. In reality
flag-depots are small passenger depots at unimportant local stations, and
they are frequently called second, third, or fourth-class passenger depots,
according to the classification adopted by the railroad company. '-'*
Flag depots varied from an open or covered platform to a building containing one or
two waiting rooms, a small baggage room, a telegraph office, bathrooms, and more rarely
living quarters for an agent. Hag-depots most often lay alongside passenger tracks. Good
design, according to Berg, included a waiting room with adjoining ticket-office, preferably
a bay-window extension of the office track-side. Baggage rooms, according to Berg, were
usually best placed facing the track. In terms of determining style for these stations. Berg
wrote
...the importance of the locality will govern. Rag-depots in cities or at
important suburban settlements are frequently built very substantially and
artistically, while similar buildings in thinly populated districts on a pioneer
railroad need not to be anything more than the cheapest frame suitable for
the purpose. '-^
While he noted there was no general rule for materials used for flag-depots, "stone
buildings exist in isolated instances." '-'> Of Richardson's stations. Berg considered those at
Chestnut Hill, Woodland, Waban, and Wellesley Hills to fit within the flag-depot category.
He did not mention the station at Eliot.
Another chapter in Berg's book was devoted to "Local Passenger Depots," which
he defined as
Passenger depots solely for the accommodation of the passenger business
of a railroad are used at all local stations of railroads where the passenger
business is of sufficient importance to warrant a separate building, or where
1 ^Walter Berg, Buildings and Structures of American Railroads (New York: John Wiley and Sons,
1893) 264.
'•^Berg, p. 264.
15Berg, p. 264.
26
the freight business is handled in a separate building. '6
Depending on the "local conditions and importance of the station", variations would
occur in temis of size, design, and type of structure. Berg clarified that "flag-depots are
simply small local passenger depots, the distinction between the two being very hard to
maintain, as the change from one group to the other in practice is frequently imperceptible,
and not clearly defined." '7
Berg explained that railroads usually divided station designs into "classes," with
flag-depots being the cheapest and smallest of passenger stations. As noted previously,
passenger depots varied greatly and could include waiting rooms (small to large), ticket-
offices, baggage-rooms, express rooms, mail rooms, telegraph offices, parcel rooms,
news stands, supply rooms, offices, and rooms for conductors and trainmen. The larger
stations that contained a number of these features approached the character of "terminal
side-stations." Berg summarized that "in discussion of local passenger depots the remarks
are necessarily general, and no special rules can be established, as the range of buildings
embraced under the term of local passenger depots is very extensive." ' 8 Stylistically Berg
advised
...it is very difficult to make any general recommendations. The importance
of the station, the surroundings, the desires of the railroad management, and
sometimes the wishes of the community, the prevailing class of architecture
and building materials in each particular section of the country, will all
influence the final choice. ' 9
All of Richardson's stations fitting this category were "side-stations," which, in being set
along one side of the tracks, obliged passengers to cross the tracks in order to reach trains
on the other side. Some had covered platforms on the opposite side of the depot building,
l^Berg, p. 278.
• 7Thc quotes in this paragraph were taken from Berg, p. 278.
• 8The quotes in this paragraph w ere taken from Berg, p. 278.
19Berg, p. 278.
27
which was usually the out-bound side.
Berg described factors that affected efficient station plans. Like Gilbert, he believed
that ticket offices, when used as telegraph offices, were best placed at the front of a
building, facing the track, with a bay-window projection, so that moving trains would be
visible from within the office. He called for separate ticket windows for separate waiting
rooms and good light, day and night, on both sides of the ticket windows. He debated the
merit of tickets sold in a lobby or large waiting room. Offices should be "comfortable and
convenient for the employes.l sic]" Separate waiting rooms for men and women were most
desirable, but when this was not the case, there should be "at least a small ladies" parior
with toilet room attached." Berg argued that it was essential that the doors to both men's
and ladies' bathrooms did not enter directly into a general waiting room. Great advantage
could be gained in a "generously proportioned and comfortably fitted-up smoking-room."
which according to Berg (echoing Gilbert), "will not only accommodate smokers, but it
will draw off from the waiting rooms quite an undesirable element, as emigrantsLsic],
laborers, hackmen, and loungers around the depot."20
Doors in the waiting rooms were best placed so that passengers could enter from
the rear of the building, pass through the ticket-window, and exit out to the train in as direct
route as possible. Baggage room location should enable baggage to be easily received from
the street side, as well as delivered from track side. Platform space should allow baggage
to be stored under cover and would leave room for passenger traffic. When there was a
general waiting room, it was best to allow an opening from that room to the baggage room
so that passengers could make their arrangements without having to go outside, but in
smaller stations this was not as important. With limited help in a smaller station and
sometimes one person responsible for tickets and baggage, easy access to and from these
rooms was most sensible.
2(^his and all quoles in the preceding paragraph were taken from Berg, p. 281.
28
In the case of dining rooms, when a building was two stories, it was best to have
kitchen and serving rooms on the second floor, so as not to disrupt passenger flow on the
flrst level. Also in buildings with two floors, the upper floor was often used for offices for
the telegraph department, train-dispatcher, clerks, trainmen's rooms, etc.
Heating, ventilating, plumbing and lighting was to be the best available, and
"...large fire-places of quaint and artistic design in the waiting-rooms add not only to the
general artistic effect and finish of the interior, but afford a good chance to warm the rooms
and brighten them up in damp weather" as well as offering good ventilation.2 1
Conveniently located covered platforms accommodated crowds and decreased the size
required of a waiting room. Also when benches were provided on platforms, "a large
number of travellers, and especially depot loungers, will congregate on the platforms in
place of the waiting rooms."22 Another benefit to passengers were drinking-fountains.
The Richardson-designed stations Berg fit within this category included the stations
at Palmer, Old Colony in North Easton, Holyoke, Aubumdale, South Framingham, and
Brighton.
Berg concluded his introduction to "Local Passenger Depots" in part recognizing
the impact of Richardson's stations in the seven years that had passed since his death.
Relative to the design for the exterior of depots, much stress has been laid
within recent years on providing artistic and picturesque structures for local
passenger depots, especially at suburban points where the travel consists
largely of wealthy patrons of the road. The artistic designs prepared by the
late Mr. H. H. Richardson, the well-known architect, of Boston, Mass.,
and a gradually increasing demand for artistic structures at passenger
stations have given an impetus to the designing of more artistic structures,
with the result that architects of established reputation have been called on
by railroad managers for designs.23
But Berg reminded the reader, that "in order, however, to produce quaint and artistic
2lBerg, pp. 283-284.
22Berg, p. 284.
23Berg. p. 284.
29
features in the exterior of a railroad structure, the practical requirements for the ground-plan
layout should not be sacrificed," and while "picturesqueness of design in a small suburban
depot is an important consideration. ..in large depots the style of architecture adopted
should be more indicative of the purposes to which the building is devoted." 24 When
designing a series of stations, minor details should be modified,
...so as to avoid a monotonous sameness of similar structures along the
road. This can be easily accomplished by making modifications in the
details of the exterior finish, gables, dormer-windows, ridge-cresting,
finials. roof-brackets, chimneys, etc., without in reality changing the
ground-plan or the frame or the walls of the building.2-'>
Berg mentioned that the employment of a landscape architect had produced many
cases of "picturesque and artistic depot surroundings." With ground planting around
buildings, well maintained flower beds and shrubberies, neat railings, graveled walks and
roads, good results had been seen to the advantage of "a large number of railroads." He
cited the Pennsylvania Railroad's Ardmore Station, and the B & A's Aubumdale Station as
admirable examples.26
Marianna Van Rensselaer explained in her book on Richardson that one look at any
of Richardson's stations instructed the viewer of the building's purpose, as
...not a house but a shelter, not a place to live in but, so to say, a place to
wait under. The roof is the chief feature, not the walls. These are always
low and the plan as compact as possible, while the roof is always massive
and broad.27
Van Rensselaer pointed out that while no two station designs were alike, there was in all an
"expression of temporary shelter as the main thing to be supplied, together with a sturdy air
24The quotes from this paragraph were taken from Berg, p. 284.
25Berg, p. 285.
2<^Thc quotes from this paragraph were taken from Berg, p. 285.
-"^ Mananna Gnswold Van Rensselaer, Henry Hobson Richardson and His Works (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1888) 98.
30
of permanence." She saw simplicity in design and minimal decoration as appropriate,
criticizing the trend of "country railroad stations" as having been "hideous make-shifts or
futile attempts at prettiness."2S She stressed that Richardson's station designs did not
compromise efficient design for aesthetic appearance, with parts carefully built and plans
carefully studied for convenience and compactness. While Van Rensselaer's evaluations
would be echoed by some in critical reviews, others would dispute her approval.
THE RAILROAD BEAUTIFUL MOVEMENT AND FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED
Railroads began to beautify station grounds not out of an interest in philanthropy,
but in order to increase traffic. The railroad gardening movement was successful in that
corporations were able to convince the public that they cared for beauty, and that landscape
architects could do more than make cemeteries, parks, and home grounds attractive. The
gardens and grounds did meet the satisfaction of commuters, and represented a creative
attempt by landscape architects to synthesize the needs of corporations, municipalities, civic
improvement groups, and individuals.
An early advocate of railroad gardening working in the latter half of the nineteenth-
century was Donald G. Mitchell, a Connecticut agricultural reformer and landscape
architect familiar with European railroad gardens.29 Mitchell insisted that these gardens not
simply be attractive, but could also provide railroad employees with money from the sale of
freshly cut flowers such as roses, heliotropes, and marguerites. Not only would these
efforts reflect well on the railroad company, but act as a powerful promotion for landscape
architects, and perhaps create new opportunities for their practice. As his guiding
principle, Mitchell suggested that the garden existed for both the observer of the station and
^The quotes from this paragraph were taken from Van Rensselaer, p. 98.
29john R. Slilgoe, Metropolitan Corridor: Railroads and the American Scene (New Ha\en: Yale
University Press, 1983) 230.
31
the train, as well as for the observer in the station and the train. Architect designed stations
and landscape architect designed grounds reflected railroad company's effort to understand
and cater to the psyche of the riders. Their hope was that riders would find the commute
nice enough so as not to return to the city, and thus lose business.
Articles in contemporary periodicals such as Scrihner's Monthly ( 1881 ) and
Landscape Architect (1911) stressed the potential of station grounds as public parks.-^"
Problems discouraging railroad parks included the narrowness of land available at most
sites as it was rare for railroad companies to own land on the street side of stations,
especially with the location of many stations away from town centers. Since the typical
suburban station often consisted of two structures, one a heated building and the other, a
covered platform, most patrons spent all of the time at the station building awaiting the
trains in the morning; virtually no one lingered after arrival in the evening. It was not clear,
therefore, if a railroad station park should extend to both sides of the tracks. Contemporary
articles revealed a growing concern on the part of the railroads in creating grounds that
would attract children and casual pedestrians with the subsequent fear of liability resulting
from accidents. In the corporate mind, station grounds were ornamented to please those
waiting to board trains, people leaving trains, and people waiting for the arrival of friends
and family, and to display the congenial attitude of the railroad company. From these roots
the railroad gardening movement grew into a "new spatial aesthetic neither rural or urban,"
peculiar to suburbs and appealing to those commuters "torn between rural and urban
aesthetic values."3 1
30See Samuel Parson, "Railway, Church-Yard, and Cemetery Lawn-Planting," Scrihner's Monthly
22 July 1881: 415-419, and E. L. Chicanot, "Beautifying a Railroad System," iMniiscape Archiieci 15
1911: 185-194.
31Stilgoc, p. 243.
32
OLMSTED AND THE BOSTON AND ALBANY COMMISSIONS
The Boston & Albany must have decided that the benefits of railroad gardening
outweighed the risks. Because of baggage master E.L. Richardson's individual efforts to
beautify the station grounds in Newtonville, Charles Sargent presented to the Boston &
Albany board a proposal in September, 1881 for improving station grounds along the entire
line.32 The program was accepted, and E.L. Richardson underwent formal training at the
Arnold Arboretum to become the head of a department of station gardens. The railroad
developed and maintained its own nurseries for its landscape program, and Frederick Law
Olmsted was engaged to develop plans for the grounds of a select number of stations, and
also to develop programs for some older stations. The Boston & Albany stations that
Olmsted collaborated with Richardson on included ones in Newton, Brighton, Wellesley
Hills, North Easton, and Palmer.-''^ After Richardson's death, his successor firm of
Shepley, Rutlan, and Coolidge continued to build stations for the Boston & Albany, in the
style of Richardson's designs, including this landscape program.
Olmsted worked on a small budget; in the beginning he planted grounds with
perennials such as wild roses, bridal wreath, and Japanese Ivy, and shade trees such as
white willow, American beech, and white pine.34 Other trees included oaks, spruces,
maple, and forms of dwarf growth. Shrubs and bushes included red dogwood, sweet fern,
bayberry, sumac, woodbine, honeysuckle and bittersweet.-^-'' Requiring little for
maintenance, the rugged plants withstood New England's harsh winters, and since they
32ochsner, "Architecture for the Boston & Albany Railroad: 1881-1894," p. 120.
33oinisted may have done a small amount of landscaping for South Frammgham as well, since
some landscaping was done (see Charles Mulford Robinson, "Suburban Station Grounds," House and
Garden 5 Apnl 19()4: 182-187,) but no mention is made of who was responsible.
34stilgt>c, p. 234.
35De.scribed in Frank Atkin.son Arnold, "A Study in Railroad Gardening, "^M^Mr/ww Life, May
1905: 19-23.
33
were mostly low-growing, they accented the design of Richardson's relatively low-level
stations. Along the right-of-way on either side of the stations, Olmsted planted hardy
shrubs, particularly wild-roses, providing a pleasant view for passengers aboard waiting
trains.
The Boston & Albany's railroad gardening program and Olmsted's involvement
received immediate praise, inspiring articles in Garden and Forest, Architectural Record,
Suburban Life, and House and Garden.^(^ Local newspapers praised the landscaping early
on, while the first Journal articles to feature Richardson's stations appeared in Gardenand
Forest , in April and March of 1889. The Chestnut Hill and Aubumdale stations were
featured in these two articles by Charles Sargent, publisher of Garden and Forest. The
articles are full of praise for Richardson's designs, Olmsted's landscaping, and the Boston
& Albany's savvy sensibility in implementing such a program. Sargent, writing of
Richardson, proclaimed that "when the Boston and Albany Railroad Company asked him
to design their station at Aubumdale he showed for the first time what such a building
ought to be," and that the Railroad was equally wise in selecting Mr. Olmsted for
landscaping.37
Oddly, in her biography of Richardson M. Van Rensselaer made no note of Olmsted
^^'Garden and Forest (\^99-\W&) was a modest but high-grade Boston weekly consisting of
twelve or sixteen pages without illustrations and edited by Charles S. Sargent." Mo\.\.,Volume IV. p. 342.
Suburban magazine was founded in January 1903 as a Cambndge monthly by George Marsh. It
mo\ed to Boston shortly thereafter, and was made into a weekly with local news of various suburbs as its
chief feature, with some home and garden material. It later became a w idely circulated monthly magazine.
Suburban IJfe, in 1905. MoluVolume fV, p. 82. After becoming Countryside , it was absorbed by the
Independetu. in 1916. Frank Luther Motl, A History of American Magazines Volunw II: 1850-1865
(Cambndge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1957) 378.
House and (iarden ViSLS one of a number of magazines about house building serving pnmarily
women, founded in 1901 by three Philadelphia architects (Wilson Eyre, Jr., Frank Miles Day, and Herbert
C. Wise). It was a nchly illustrated high-grade magazine said to be from the point of \ lew of the architect.
Monyolume IV. p. 324.
37charles Sprague Sargent, "The Railroad Station at Aubumdale, Mas.sachusetts," Gardetmnd
Forest II 13 March 1889: 124.
34
having been the landscaper of any station grounds.-^*^ While not mentioning any
landscaping specifically, she did state that each station was "designed with reference to its
effect on its own particular site," and cited the idyllic union of "artistic and natural beauties"
achieved at the station at Chestnut Hill.39 Also, sketches of the stations appearing in her
book clearly revealed a concern with landscaping.
From 1889 on, the B & A landscaping program was mentioned in articles
describing the stations, with the entire landscaping program featured in "A Railroad
Beautiful" by Charles Mulford Robinson. Appearing in House & Garden in 1902,
Robinson's article focused on stations along the Circuit Railroad. Robinson offered great
admiration for the Boston & Albany's efforts in the article, suggesting that the idea of
planting attractive grounds for railroad stations was quite novel, and arguing that the usual
opinion being that "railroads, with their strictly utilitarian purpose and common ugliness
seem naturally at the antitheses of esthetic endeavor."-+o Robinson aligned the recent trend
in railroad gardening with the development of "city and town improvement" and he praised
the Boston & Albany's efforts as the most successful of any of the railroads, criticizing
"the Old Colony and the Pennsylvania" as being not as inventive or nice.-* i
Robinson, while full of praise, did offer some criticism. Robinson found the
lighting apparatuses, "an electric globe on the end of a long curved arm of iron which is
fastened to a wooden post.. .about as uncouth as could well be planned." Elaborating on the
disruptive effect this caused at the stations, he suggested that "the company had suddenly
failed." He also found the "unshaded condition of the platformjs]" unsatisfactory.
38ii is in part peculiar since it was Olmsted who strongly encouraged Mrs. Van Rensselaer to
write the Richardson biography.
39The quotes from this paragraph were taken from Van Rensselaer, p. 101-102.
■^OCharies Mulford Robinson, "A Railroad Beautiful," Hoitse and Garden 2 November 1902: 564 ■
570. Reprinted in The Newton Journal 13 March 1903.
'* 'The quotes in this paragraph were taken from Robinson, reprinted in The Newton Journal.
35
suggesting that large trees would provide shade and make the outdoor wait much more
pleasant. The asphalt driveways at the stations were also inappropriate introducing "a
jarring urban note in a strictly rural scene that is otherwise wholly delightful." He
suggested that "light travel to which the roads are subjected gravel had been not merely an
excusable but even a preferable cover."
However, Robinson admired the "absence of bill boards" from the circuit, due to
"the good taste of land owners" along the way. He observed a "tendency to conceal the
station, in the view from the town, rather than to emphasize it presence." Accompanying
this was a photograph of the station at Woodland, showing the small station's "half-
concealment behind the beautifying bushes." The use of landscaping to hide railroad
accoutrements would become a repeated theme in critical reviews of the gardening.-+2
In another article for House & Garden in 1904 "Suburban Station Grounds"
published in 1904 Charles M. Robinson expanded his account of the B & A's landscaping
program beyond Newton. Robinson described how attention to suburban stations and their
grounds expanded one's sense of home upon return from a commute, explaining that the
railroad
...is doing no more than its share, no more than it owes to itself, in making
its part of the town— which is also the town's official entrance-attractive.
And when it does this, it does much for the commuter;— its own gain is
dependent upon his— pleasing even his expansive ideas. It makes his home
seem considerably nearer his office, and that means a great deal to railroad
and to commuter.-+-'^
Further on in the article he helped define the landscape architect's perspective to railroad
gardening.
A landscape architect does not consider a road as a thing to be emphasized
■^2The quotes in the two preceding paragraphs were taken from Robinson, as reprinted in Tlw
Newton Journal.
-^-^Thls quote and those from the preceding paragraph were taken lYom Charles Mulford Robinson,
"Suburban Station Grounds," Wo/iSfo/jJGard?// 5 Apnl 1904: 182.
36
any more than is necessary, and to get a good picture he has to define—or,
in a measure shut in.— his design. Faithful adherence to an artistic
conception, without permitting the railroad ideal of sheer directness, utility
and dead level to intrude, seems to be the secret of the good effect here
secured. The station grounds, small as they are, are like a little park.-+-*
The article featured a number of stations done for the Boston & Albany by Richardson's
successor firm, which were largely adaptations of his original designs.
"A Study in Railroad Gardening" by Frank Atkinson Arnold published in Suburban
Life, 1905, included a large photo of Aubumdale's vine-clad porte cochere. Arnold
described the mass exodus of "over seven hundred thousand people" who had left cities for
the suburbs, "thus combining all the pleasures and advantages of the country with the
•attractions and conveniences of city life." He recalled the effortsof a number of railroads
to beautify their stations, creating a "Garden Railroad", which "seem|ed| almost
paradoxical for is not the average railroad more frequently remembered by its association
with dust, soot and cinders, rather than anything which would breathe of the garden with
its fragrance and welcome shade?" While he credited the Pennsylvania, Old Colony and
Boston & Maine railroads for their efforts, he praised the Boston & Albany foremost for
"demonstrat|ing] the practical value of the scheme by long years of study and application,
which have brought the plan far beyond the experimental stage."
Again described were efforts made in the landscaping to "obscure all unsightly
approaches to the railroad station." The station at Aubumdale, "form[sJ in spring and
summer an almost impenetrable screen from what would otherwise be an unsightly cut
through one of the prettiest suburban towns on the road," while at Wellesley Hills
"necessary ugly cuts in the solid rock. ..have been skillfully obscured as far as possible by
shrubs and vines..." -^-^
Much praise was paid to the Boston & Albany as the founders of the railroad
■^•^Robinson "Suburban Station Grounds," pp. 183-184.
•+5The quotes in the preceding paragraphs were taken from Arnold, pp. 19-23.
37
gardening movement, and in initiating wide-spread efforts throughout the country, and the
author hoped that
...in outlining what has been accomplished in a comparatively
circumscribed area by what is now one portion of a vast railroad system, we
trust there has been brought before our readers not only a sense of what has
already been accomplished, but also the necessity for supplying a proper
public spirit, which shall ensure its continuance as a permanent feature of
railroading, not only in New England but throughout our entire country .■+6
J.H. Phillips in "The Evolution of the Suburban Station," published in the
Architectural Record in 1914 praised the Boston and Albany's as "pioneers" in raising the
standards of suburban stations and their grounds, in "starting a comprehensive effort in the
artistic treatment of its stations and their surroundings.. .expressing the standing of the
suburb as a progressive and cultivated community." Phillips claimed that the "two famous
artists," Richardson and Olmsted,
...held very properly that rural way stations were not for show.
Ostentation, therefore, was to be avoided. Their chief purpose was to
provide comfortable and pleasant shelters for passengers while waiting for
their trains.. .The stations. ..have a quiet picturesqueness... ample grounds,
laid out with pleasant modulated surfaces of turf, ornamented with
diversified shrubbery disposed in masses and in such a way as to give most
pleasing impressions.. ..The shrubbery was selected with a view to a
pleasing effect not only throughout the growing part of the year, but as far
as possible through the winter months as well.-+7
Phillips went on to point out that "the unsightly objects that often offend in the
neighborhood of a railway were hidden with trees and all embankments were planted. The
scars left where the railroad ploughed through a picturesque landscape and the cuts where
gravel and rock were left exposed were covered with vegetation. Ledges and retaining
walls were adorned with climbing plants and vines that produced a natural impression
■+6Amold, p. 23.
-^'^Thls quote and those in the preceding paragraph were taken from J.H. Phillips, "The Evolution of
the Suburban StaUon," Arclulectural Record 36 August 1914; 122-127.
38
consistent with conditions of a certain rustic formality. "-*8
The B & A efforts in railroad gardening helped lead other railroad companies to do
the same, the more well known including the Boston & Maine, the Lackawanna, and the
Michigan Central.-*'^
■+8The quotes in this paragraph were taken from Phillips, pp. 124-125.
■*9See Susan Elizabeth Ellis, "The Route of Scenic Charm': A Case Study of the Delaware,
Lackawanna, and Western Railroad in the Amencan Landscape, 1880-1940," Master's Thesis, Uni\ersity of
Pennsvhania, 1990.
39
CHAPTER FOUR:
EXCLUSIVE SHELTERS
40
CHAPTER FOUR: EXCLUSIVE SHELTERS
The stations designed by Richardson in Newton, Wellesley Hills, and North Haston
received the most attention, especially those on the Newton Circuit. The reasons for this
included the towns along the Circuit being the most prosperous suburbs west of Boston
and in the case of North Easton, that the station was part of a larger, unique series of
commissions for the Ames family and located in a village a short distance southwest of
Boston.
THE STATIONS AND NEWTON
Richardson's stations for the B & A in Newton greatly contributed to an image the
town actively sought to promote. They were seen as charming, stylish, picturesque,
artistic, and sophisticated presentations of what had previously been considered utilitarian
and given little consideration. The B & A's Circuit was unusual in that it was created
solely for the purpose of providing commuter transportation for the wealthy western
suburbs of Boston, and the railroad understood that it was in its own best interest to
address this clientele sensibly, mirroring the image the developing communities were
promoting. At the same time, many of the railroad directors lived in these places, and
understood clearly what was desired by their fellow suburban residents. Commuters did
not wish to be bothered with trains, but they had no choice in the matter, and a pleasant
presentation helped to make the ride as painless as possible. An article in The Newton
Graphic of April 2, 1887, entitled "The Suburban Resident: A Graphic Description of his
Tribulations," described the drudgery experienced early on by commuters.
I spend my life in catching trains....! live in the country because I like it
better than living in the city, but it is not all pleasure.. .the botheration of my
life is the catching of trains for home in the afternoon. I make up may mind
what train I am going to take, and them I begin doing business with the
clock.. ..The train on which I ride home is filled with suburban passengers
who have, probably, been doing about as I have, and are, as a
41
consequence, in no better frame of mind than I am. ..suburban passengers
are the meanest lot of stock that is ever shipped over that road or any other. '
This chapter will begin with a discussion of the town of Newton, its residents, its
divisions, Richardson's stations there, and how they reflected these factors. After a short
look at Brighton, a neighboring area the site of another Richardson station, a similar
evaluation of Wellesley Hills will follow of suburb and station. Last will be a look at North
Easton, something of an anomaly but with parallels to the examples in the preceding
suburbs.
NEWTON
Newton presents unparalleled attractions as a place of residence for a
business man of Boston, among the attractions are frequent and expeditious
communication, citizens of intelligence and refined culture, an honest,
upright government, well disciplined police and fire departments, an ample
supply of pure water, a large free library, excellent schools, active,
flourishing churches, a community remarkable for its healthfulness, and,
not least, a beautiful and diversified scenery, not excelled by any place in
New England.2
King's Handbook of Newton of 1889 (FIGURE 2) must have beckoned those
considering joining the ranks of prominent Bostonians (some 20,000 by 1885) who had
made the move to a more "'civilized" life in the suburbs.^ The handbook ceaselessly
promoted the excellence of such an environment, frequently citing statistics regarding
health, street lengths, and ethnicity. Newton recovered quickly after the Civil War, with an
increasing number of new houses built annually, to reach a peak in 1870. ■* In 1869 the
Boston and Albany Railroad was established, and the New York, Hartford and Erie
'"The Suburban Residenl,"77j^ \ewton Graphic 2 April 1887.
2Real Estate Supplement,77ie Newton Graphic 29 August 1885.
^Moses Foster Sweetser, editor, Kin^ 'x Handbook of Newton (Boston: Moses King 1889) 30.
■^ Due to railroad impanemenLs. Newton Tricentennial Corporation, Newton Massachusetts 1688-
1988 (Newton, MA: 1988) 52.
42
Railroad exf)anded services to southern Newton, thus increasing passenger service.
A description of Newton in Kinf^'s Handbook began with its boundaries; located in
the southeastern end of Middlesex County, Newton was surrounded by "Waltham and
Watertown on the North, Brookline and the Brighton and West-Roxbury wards of Boston
on the East, Needham on the South and West, and Wellesley and Weston on the West.""^
(FIGURE 3) From the Charles River winding around Newton for more than sixteen miles,
came water-powers at its upper and lower falls, and streams and ponds providing scenic
landscapes, boating, bathing, and fishing. Newton claimed seven hills "like ancient
Rome": Nonantum Hill, Waban Hill, Chestnut Hill, Institution Hill, Skinner's Hill, Moffat
Hill and Sylvan Heights.^' Because of its attractive and picturesque landscape, Newton
was called the "Garden City."
Newton was actually an assemblage of villages; (FIGURE 4) Newton,
Newtonville, Nonantum (or North Village), West Newton, Aubumdale, Riverside,
Newton Lower Falls, Newton Upper Falls, Newton Highlands, and Newton Centre, along
with less developed areas around Waban, Eliot, and Oak Hill. By the 1890s fourteen
railway stations accompanied the villages; those designed by Richardson included
Aubumdale, Chestnut Hill, Woodland, Waban, and Eliot. Newton in the last quarter of the
nineteenth-century was described as a "compactly settled residence quarter;" it was still
primarily a walking city, or a collection of walking villages.7 Room for building near
stations had become increasingly scarce, and many owners of larger properties began to
create lots on the peripheries of their estates.
Writing of Newton's residents. Sweeter observed that "the local society, being
made up of professional and city men, escapes all rural provincialism, and is in a good
^Sweelser, p. 29.
^Sweelser, p. 30.
^Sweetser, p. 34.
43
sense select, without clannishness."** For those interested, Sweetser in Kinf^'s Handbook
gave statistics describing the homogeneous ethnic composition of Newton. Sweetser cited
an 1885 local census, which accounted for 8.849 white males, 10,919 white females, 71
Black males, 65 Black females, 20 mulatto males and 34 mulatto females. Furthermore
10,950 of these residents were natives of Massachusetts, 3,3 15 of other states; foreigners
were comprised of 2,891 people from Ireland, 598 from England, 1,563 from the British
Colonies, 121 from Scotland, 99 German, and a total of 109 from Sweden, Denmark,
France, Switzerland, the West Indies, Italy, Norway, Portugal, China, Wales, Poland,
Spain, Russia, Holland, Turkey and South America.9
The majority of Newton's residents saw themselves as "industrious, prosperous,
and well-to-do citizens." 'O Most were Yankee Boston businessmen and their wives and
children. Migrating from the city, they sought a more tranquil existence as cities were
increasingly perceived as squalid, morally depraved, and generally unhealthy. With better
and more frequent train service and with the opening of the Circuit Railroad, more urban
residents saw an easy way out of Boston without having to compromise business there.
As to their politics, Sweetser noted "the citizens preserve a strong fealty to the
Republican party, on National questions, while in their local elections they manifest a
notable independence, somewhat akin to the aberrations of the Mugwumps."' > In terms of
crime, a vigilant police force made five to six hundred arrests a year. The cause for arrest,
according to Sweetser, was about a third for drunkenness, about one hundred disturbances
of the peace, and fifty or more larcenies. He was quick to note that "most of these rueful
^Speaking of Aubumdale village, Sweetser, p. 190.
9aI1 of the information in this f)aragraph was taken from Sweetser, pp. 36-38.
'OSweeLser, p. 32.
' • Sweetser, p. 34. The Mugwumps were a group of Independent Republicans who bolted their
party in the presidential election of 1884 to vote for Grover Cleveland on the Democratic ticket. The
Independents had hoped to win the Republican nomination for Cleveland, whom they championed,
somewhat inaccurately, as a fighter in the cause of reform.
44
culprits are foreigners, some of whom are also represented among the 1 ,200 tramps that are
yearly cared for by the city authorities." > 2 These foreigners lived in the North Village
section of Newton, where a working-class community had been developing since the
1850s, mostly composed of, Irish Catholic immigrants. This area was develop)ed at about
the same time as the establishment of manufacturing hosiery mills. One of the owners of
these mills, Thomas Dalby, also built houses for the workers in this area. In the early
1880s the Nonantum Worsted Company took over the Darby Mills, and the village became
known as "Nonantum." The company expanded its facilities and built more housing for
their workers, as French Canadians began to arrive in large numbers. Upper Falls was
another area to develop industrially, first employing young Yankee men and women from
small towns, who were later replaced largely by Catholic immigrants. It was in this section
of Newton that the town's first Mass was celebrated in a private house in 1843.1-'^
West Newton, which saw slow development compared to other areas, was home to
the first Black families, many of them joining the Lincoln Baptist church built in 1869. The
West Newton Land Company lots sold quickly, most being built on within ten years. On
West Newton Hill the process of breaking up the larger estates began in the 1870s.
Newton's villages were thus home to a prosperous, Yankee majority, with small
segregated areas of industry as home to the small population of immigrants and Blacks.
The railroads did not serve these populations, allowing them to live separately in well-
delineated areas where they were permitted, albeit unwelcomed. A letter sent to The
Newton Graphic in 1887 entitled "What Does Newton Want Most?" illustrated the ill-
feeling toward Irish in the town. The writer criticized this sort of sentiment, expressed in
reference to the building of an additional railroad station at "Mt. Ida,"
opposed by a small handful of individuals who logically (?) argue that the
1 2SweeLser, p. 36.
' ^Newton Tncenlennial Corporation, p. 88.
45
Boston & Albany railroad corporation has no right to interfere with their
peace of mind by conceding anything that might proximately | sic | induce
those "Dreadful Irish," you know, to ride on this road instead of the
other. '■+
While this is an excellent example of the existence of such sentiment of the time, it is also
significant in that the writer questioned such thought as an impediment to progress.
Health was frequently mentioned in contemporary discussions of the quality of life
in Newton; an article from the August 29, 1885 issue of The Newton Gra/jA/c claimed that
Newton's "statistics show. ..the very low per cent of death rate, or cases of contagious
diseases (largely owing to the purity of our water supply and the general healthfulness of
the situation)."'-'' The town was "blest with abundance of pure air," an excellent water-
supply system, and claimed by King's Handbook as the healthiest city in Massachusetts,
with a death rate below fourteen for each thousand of the population. ' (" Water supply was
of great public concern because of the (gradual) acceptance of germ theory.
The Amenities of the Suburb
By 1885 all but two of Newton's villages were well established; the city had
newspajjers, gas lighting replacing oil lamps, the first streetcar company was operating and
a woman was elected to public office to serve on the school committee. In 1886 a
newspaper article announced that Newton would soon have electricity.' "7 Along with
growth in population, was an advance in the town's "material prosperity and beauty." '8
By 1889 the town had "1 10 miles of.. .streets.. .carefully constructed on scientific
'-♦Letter to the editor. The Newton Graphic 23 April 1887.
' ^"Boston and Albany Railroad," The Newton Graphic 29 August 1885.
1 6Sweetser, p. 30.
^"^The Newton Graphic 11 September 1886.
'^Sweelser, p. 30.
46
principles, and macadamized with the best and most durable materials."i9 The result beino
...the drives are both numerous and beautiful. The streets are so well-kept
and so free from dust that that alone would make driving a pleasure. ...The
streets and sidewalks are thoroughly appreciated by 'cyclists.2(>
In the Newtonville Village area a great demand for houses close to the station
developed, so that some first generation residents were tempted to divide up their
properties. Devices developed to provide access to new lots in backyards, some with little
space, resulting in "courts," "places," and narrow angled streets. Modest Gothic Revival,
Italianate. and eariy Queen Anne styled houses were built here.
THE CIRCUIT RAILROAD
No more picturesque route can well be imagined than that over the Boston
circuit of the Boston & Albany Railroad through what is universally
considered the most beautiful residential district of Greater Boston. Such a
trip, taken on some bright morning in spring or early summer, is an
occasion long to be remembered.2 1
Plans for a Circuit Railroad by the B & A to extend service to Newton Highlands
from Brookline were long anticipated, having been slowed by economic slump.
Newspaper articles recognized the development potential that would be introduced with the
Circuit, speaking enthusiastically for such changes, and anticipating a building boom. As
they hoped, new and explosive development would begin with its opening in 1886, and
following the arrival of the electric streetcar in 1889. The Circuit consisted of a loop
running from Boston outward through Longwood, Brookline, Chestnut Hill, Newton
Centre, Woodland to Riverside, and then through Aubumdale, the Newtons, Brighton,
1 9Sweetser, p. 30.
20 "Aubumdale's Attractions," The Newton Graphic 6 Januar> 1888.
21 Arnold, p. 19.
47
Allston. and back to Boston. The B & A was praised by the papers for their excellent
management and willingness to accommodate patrons, and in providing frequent and
reliable train services.
Not least among the many attractions of Newton as a place of residence is
the frequent and expeditious communication via the Boston and Albany
railroad, between this city and Boston. There is no better managed road in
this country, and not one which makes such unbounded effort to
accommodate its patrons.22
At the same time plans were being made for new train service in Newton, were plans for
the construction of new stations. According to Van Rensselaer, the first commission was
for Aubumdale station in February 1881.
AUBURNDALE STATION
Undoubtedly, one of the loveliest villages in America is Aubumdale,
occupying a peculiarly advantageous position between the shaggy hills that
enwall the upper Cheesecake glen and the picturesque bays of the Charles
River, which bends gracefully around its bold plateau in curves of
surpassing beauty. 23
King's Handbook of Newton
Moses Sweetser devoted a chapter of his guide about Newton, to Aubumdale. The
village, at the time, was home to about 2,000 people, and according to Sweetser, contained
almost perfect sanitary conditions, admirable drainage, copious water-supplies, concrete
sidewalks, and "an enlightened public vigilance."24 The village was home to prosperous
Boston businessmen, an atlas from the time shows an exclusively residential area.
(FIGURE 5) An article reprinted from The Quincy Pond in The Newton Graphic of
January 6, 1888, "Aubumdale's Attractions," described the village.
22 Real Estate SuppXemcnUThe Newlon Graphic 29 August 1885.
23S\\eetser, p. 189.
24Sweelser, p. 189.
48
There are no busy wheels of traffic or rising industries or mammoth mills;
no magnificent brick or stone business houses; no bank or enterprising local
newspaper, and no poor-house. All these, however, can be found within a
mile, at either Waltham, Weston, or West Newton, but Aubumdale has
never felt the need of them.2>
The article described residences as being set well back from the street, surrounded with
"unusually large grounds covered with fruit and shade trees. Few of the houses are small,
and many are fine examples of modem architecture." 77?^ Graphic said that because of
Aubumdale's popularity, few or no houses were available to rent, and new ones were
going up all the time. In leisure time, it was suggested, one could go to the Charles River,
for boating and fishing or join the Newton Boat Club. In 1888 the Woodland Park Hotel
of>ened where, according to The Graphic many f)eople summered, some spending the entire
year there. A short distance from the depot was Lasell Seminary, a college for young
women. By 1888 trains through Aubumdale ran close to every hour in both directions, the
trip taking 35 minutes to Boston and the fare 19 cents a single ride, or 10 1/2 for hundred-
ride tickets.26
Moses Sweetser introduced the railroad station in Aubumdale as follows:
The charm of the place begins as soon as the visitor alights from the train,
for the railway station is one of the prettiest on the line, a long, low
structure of stone, in massive and attractive architecture, pleasantly bordered
by verdant lawns. The architect of this dainty temple of travel was the
famous H.H. Richardson, the foremost of Americans in his profession.
Emerging from the broad arches of this handsome building, one sees on all
sides the scattered houses of the village, embowered in trees and engirdled
with gardens, favored by a fertile soil and genial climate.27
Richardson's first commission in 1881, the design of the station was simple: a one-
story granite rectangle covered by an encompassing hipped roof, extended to the track-side
23"Aubumda]c's Attrdctions"77jd' Newton Graphic 6 Januar\ 1888.
"^^The Newton Graphic 6 January 1888.
27Sweetser, p. 189.
49
platform on one side and on the other side forming a carriage overhang. Granite blocks
were laid in random ashlar masonry. The roof was of slate, with terra cotta ridges, and
supported by wooden braces.28 The station ran parallel to the tracks. A ticket and
telegraph office protruded out of the track-side facade. The interior was divided into nearly
equal-sized waiting rooms for men (25 x 25 ft) and women (25 x 30 ft), with a ticket office
between, and a baggage room on one end.(FIGURE 6) Interiors were wainscotted in brick
and vertical wood sheathing with floors of wood. Doors and windows were symmetrically
placed around the building and trimmed with red sandstone.2y The total cost of the station,
including furnishings, was $ 16,290.30 The grounds were landscaped by Olmsted.
It was not unusual to see notices in contemporary newspapers of fatal accidents that
had occurred when people were crossing train tracks; it was a frequently expressed
concern. An article in the Newton Graphic praised the station at Aurbumdale because "one
can cross the track either by bridge or tunnel, so there is no danger of accidents."^ i
Walter Berg had praised the station at Aubumdale in his Buildings and Structures of
American Railroads for its attractive landscaping He offered no criticism, probably
because the primary features of the station complied with his suggestions for functional
station design; waiting rooms were segregated, the ticket /telegraph office was accessible
from the waiting rooms and protruded track-side, and the baggage room faced the track.
28According to Charles Sprague Sargent in "The Railroad Station at Aubumdale, Ma.ssachusetts."
Garden mid Forest 11. March 13, 1889:124-125.
29Sargent, "The Railroad-Station at Aubumdale, Ma.ssachusetts," pp. 124-125. An article in the
RaitroadGazene of No\ ember 5, 1886, stated that "All of these stations (Aubumdale, Chestnut Hill, and
Holyokel are built of Braggville, Mass., granite, with brownstone tnmmings . The rotifs are of red tiles,
and the pc»ts of the sheds and all of the timber-work are of Georgia pine." It should be noted that most of
this article was a repnnt of other articles, and it erroneously attnbuted the Union Passenger Station in
Worcester by Ware and Van Brunt ( 1875-1877) to Richardson, actually calling it "Perhaps his most famous
workof the kind."
30ochsner, Complete Works, p. 243.
3 '"Aubumdale's Attractions,"77i^ Newton Graphic 6 January 1888.
50
In March, 1889, an article appeared in Garden and Forest, (FIGURE 7) "The
Railroad-Station at Aubumdale, Massachusetts," by Charles Sargent. Sargent frequently
extolled the sensibility of the Boston & Albany's station program as exemplary, obviously
speaking in his own interest, as much of the implementation of the program was the result
of his own efforts. Sargent claimed that before Richardson, not one station had merited
attention as "intelligent and pleasing works of art." He echoed Van Rensselaer's words
that earlier stations were vulgar and exaggerated, "merely display[ing|...the railroad
company's desire to expend as little money as possible." He wrote that Richardson was
eager to find creative and artistic solutions to the challenge of solving the utilitarian
problems of station design, hitherto "neglected by art." Sargent commended Richardson's
design, for the "well proportioned" waiting rooms and the "well placed" ticket office. The
interior wainscotting of brick was "cheap, durable, pleasant to the eye, and easily kept
clean." While the woodwork was simple and without carving, "it is carefully distributed
and profiled and gives a look of refinement very different from the parsimonious nudity or
the cheap elaborateness which the average country station shows. Here, as well in the
architectural features proper, we feel that the hand of an artist has been at work."32
The building's exterior was characterized by "simplicity, dignity, and solidity [and]
its outlines and proportions are such that its true purpose could not be mistaken." Sargent
emphasized that as a temporary shelter, the "roof.. .not the walls, should dominate in its
expression, and this prime fact Richardson never forgot, no matter what was the size of the
station he was designing." He explained how the unomamented wooden posts supporting
the sheds, and divided into three braces, "express the nature of the material, and the slightly
curved form of the braces prevents any look of stiffness or monotony in outline." Again,
32The quotes in the preceding paragraph were taken from Sargent, "The Railroad Station at
Aubumdale, Massachusetts," pp. 124-125.
these sentiments recall Van Rensselaer.33
Sargent emphasized Aubumdale Station's setting and advised that the "railroad
company was as wise in asking Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted to design its grounds as in
asking Richardson to build it." He described the grounds as follows:
c"
The high-road passes obliquely by the station and from it, towards the right,
diverges the approach in an easy curve. ..the little lawns are so disposed
towards the left as to admit of the passage of numerous vehicles without
danger of over-crowding.. .lawns have been covered with neat turf and
adorned with hardy flowering shrubs, naturally disposed yet grouped in
effective masses. The boundary fence to the right is hidden by shrubbery,
and masses of it are so disposed around the walls of the building that, with
their luxuriant covering of Japanese Ivy (Ampelopsis Veilchi), they almost
seem part and parcel of Nature's handiwork. In summer this effect is the
most charming that can be produced in a rural situation, while even in
winter the delicate tracery of the naked lines and the bare masses of the
shrubs preserve it to a considerable degree.-^-*
In contemporary discussions of the grounds, a noticeable attempt was made to
present the stations and settings as appearing natural, as though they had sprung through
the earth themselves. There is often an element of surprise expressed by observers at the
fact that tracks and train were associated with such locations. This may reflect the
ambivalent feelings people and commuters felt toward the trains. Were it not for the trains,
those residents would not have been able to live and work in such contrasting settings. Yet
the trains still had unpleasant, and rather threatening associations for many people. The
disdain felt and openly aired for industry, after all, could not be so distant from its equally
technological cousin, the train.
Charles Mulford Robinson also discussed Aubumdale in "A Railroad Beautiful" for
House and Garden in 1902, comparing it in beauty with the station at Chestnut Hill.
Describing the use of landscaping to hide the practical aspects of the station, he wrote
33The quotes in the preceding paragraph were taken from Sargent, "The Railrtxid Station at
Aubumdale, Massachusetts," pp. 124-125.
34Sargenl, pp. 124-125.
52
The flagged walk curves in picturesque indolence, while the tool-house— for
which utilitarian structure the section of the road seems here to find need -
has been put apart from the station in the most inconspicuous comer of the
grounds, and then has been hidden with foliage.^-'^
e
Frank Atkinson Arnold's "A Study in Railroad Gardening" in Suburban Life in
1905 highlighted the Aubumdale station. (FIGURES)
The approach reminds one of one of the many winding paths through some
park of the great Metropolitan system, and it is with surprise that the visitor
finds himself, almost without warning, entering a vine-clad porte cochere,
which is an artistic feature of the station. Partly overgrown by Virginia
creeper and woodbine, this station possesses almost every feature of
attraction which one could imagine. Not only have shrubs and bushes been
used in profusion, but the natural resources of the place have permitted of
calling into play lofty elms, maples, and other hardy trees, which have lent
their many years of growth to the carrying out of this plan of beautifying the
grounds.^^
Perhaps a large part of the apf)eal of railroad landscaping was in its ability to hide what a
station was, to protect a lovely community from the spoilage and messy soot of railroad
transportation. People were leaving the cities to get away from the mess, density, and
squalor of urban areas, and did not care for any semblance of this in the new suburbs.
Aubumdale station acted as an attractive and refined little gate-way in and out of the new
suburb, where people could afford to shelter themselves from the increasingly gritty and
cramped life of Boston.
CHESTNUT HILL
Chestnut Hill was a less developed village of Newton, home for wealthy Boston
businessmen living in attractive, generously-sized houses, with ample grounds. Chestnut
Hill residents were slow to rely on public transport since improvements to the railroad were
35Robinson, "A Railroad Beautiful," as reprinted in TJte Newton Journal.
36Amold, p. 22.
53
slight until the 1880s; even the opening of the Circuit Railroad had little noticeable effect on
development there. As late as 1895 an atlas (FIGURE 9) showed that the estates
surrounding the station grounds were large and hardly developed, with the land remaining
exclusively residential. Few houses were built before that time, and those that were, were
early examples of Colonial Revival. An exception was the house built in 1879 for Dr.
Daniel Slad, an accomplished Newton resident, a zoologist who taught at Harvard Medical
School and who was later connected with the Peabody Museum in Salem. His house was
reminiscent of masonry houses in the English countryside built of red brick. Dr. Slad was
an ardent conservationist and gardener, active in both the Newton and Massachusetts
Horticultural societies, and the author of such papers as "How to Improve and Beautify
Newton" and "The Treatment of Small Suburban Places."37
Following the success of his station at Aubumdale and then Palmer, Richardson
was assured of additional B & A commissions; Chestnut Hill was the next.-^s Van
Rensselaer said this commission came to Richardson in April, 1883. It was built by
Norcross Brothers the following year.
Chestnut Hill was a side station; lying parallel to the tracks, its design was
rectangular, with a pitched roof extending on both track and street sides, between gable end
walls. (FIGURE 10) A track-side roof, with a dormer, created a porch supported by wood
posts, with connected eaves extending on its two gable sides so that all three elevations
provided a walkway and porch for those waiting outside for a train. This elevation
appeared somewhat awkward.(FIGURE 1 1) The carriage side was more successful
visually, distinguished by a long roof and supported by two mammoth arches springing
37New Ion Tncentennial Corporation, p. 63.
38AIexander W. Longfellow Jr. was an employee in Richardson's office from 1880 to 1885, who
wrote in an 1883 letter to his mother that he was working on the Chestnut Hill station, and that he had
worked on others. See Ochsner, "Architecture for the Boston & Albany Railroad: 1881-1894," p. 1 19.
54
from the ground, continuing the station's side walls, and providing an entrance way, as
well as a porte-cochere, for the carriages. The shape was reminiscent of a New England
salt-box house. The interior plan was that of one general waiting room (21 x36ft) with a
very small projected bay ticket-room track-side. Interiors were wainscotted with wood,
unlike that in Aubumdale, done in brick.39 Qn one wall were ladies' and men's
bathrooms, and a small baggage room by the porte-cochere. Windows and doors were
symmetrically placed. The materials were granite laid in random-ashlar masonry, with
brown sandstone trim, and a red tiled roof-K'. The 1884 Annual Report for the B & A listed
an expenditure of $1 1,860. while the Newton Graphic of 15 May 1886 listed that
improvements (including track work) cost $ 150,000.^ ' Olmsted was responsible for the
landscaping.-+2
The interiorfinishes of Richardson's stations did not appear to vary much in
material or treatment. Since few photographs are known of the original interiors and what
remains is mostly descriptive in nature, subtle differences in treatment are hard to account
for. We do know that materials were either brick or wood, and evidence suggests that the
presentations did not vary considerably from station to station.
The critics disagreed about Chestnut Hill. While the station received a large amount
of praise for its design aesthetically, Walter Berg in Buildings and Structures of American
Railroads recognized that "from a railroad-engineer's standpoint", there were "serious
39 According to Charles Sprague Sargent in "The Railroad Station at Chestnut Hil\, "Gardenatui
Forest II 3 Apnl 1889: 159-160.
•♦0 The red tiled rcxif is mentioned in Berg, p. 27, and in an article in Tfie Railroad Gazette.
-^ 'While the large difference in figures has been assumed to be a typo, the figure of $ 150,000 was
listed numerous times in newspapers, and was stated to have included significant amounts of track work.
■+2Much of the information in this paragraph came from Ochsner, Complete Works, p. 306.
55
defects in the ground pIan."-*3 He criticized the fact that the men's bathroom opened up
into the general waiting room, preferring an entrance from the outside of the building, and
added that the ticket office and baggage room were too small.
Van Rensselaer spoke of the station at Chestnut Hill as
...perhaps the prettiest example of a union of artistic and natural
beauties.. .making an hour's detention there a very different thing from that
purgatory of discomfort and impatience which we are so often called upon
to bear.-*-*
Sargent echoed Van Rensselaer's words. Less than a month after an article about
Aubumdale appeared in Garden and Forest, another article by Sargent was published in the
same magazine, entitled "The Railroad-Station at Chestnut Hill."(FIGURE 12) Sargent
called the Chestnut Hill Station "perhaps the prettiest and most picturesque of all the great
architect's rural stations, nor are the grounds equaled in beauty by any others. "-*5
Sargent also described some of the trees planted on the grounds, including White
Pine, White Willows, and American Beeches. He observed that "another American
Beech...stands in the grounds of a neighboring residence, which, of course, the landscape
gardener took care not to conceal from view." Sargent's statement implies an important
relationship between the setting of the station and the surrounding residential setting; again,
as Aubumdale was meant to appear natural, Chestnut Hill was meant to appear connected
with the residences, and the residents. This implies that the Boston & Albany wished to
insinuate the station into the lives of the residents.
The other side of the track had a narrow strip of grass, and was "edged with trees
and hardy flowering-shrubs, and everywhere these masses are neither stiffly arranged nor
-*3Berg, p. 277.
-^■*Van Rensselaer, pp. 101-102.
■^^Sargenl, "The Railroad Station al Chestnut Hill," p. 159.
56
scattered without purpose, but carefully grouped so as to secure variety in unity, interest,
grace and harmony." The first feature of the station Sargent discussed was the massive
arches so associated with this station; Sargent seemed to defend them, mentioning that the
"extreme size and solidity of the arches which form the porch of the station have been
criticized as inappropriate in so small a building." He defended their place, reminding the
reader as he did in discussing the station at Aubumdale, that
...a station is essentially a shelter, not a dwelling-place, and its roof is
therefore of far more importance in giving it the right expression than its
walls. These arches sustaining only a roof, would indeed be inappropriate
in a house, but they can be permitted in a station even by the most exacting
of purists, if he remembers the true purpose of the design. Nothing could
be more beautiful than their vigorous, simple curve, and nothing could be
more hospitable and protecting than the air they give the building.-^'
Sargent described how shrubbery planted close to the building to make the walls "as
though they sprang directly from the plantations," as if growing from nature. This element
was apparent in other buildings by Richardson, such as The Ames Gate Lodge, The Ames
Monument, and the Gumey House. This was a vision clearly resulting from the union of
Olmsted and Richardson.
Sargent concluded his article addressing the question,
Could there be a better advertisement for a suburban neighborhood than a
station and grounds like these? They imply refinement, good taste and a
regard for the amenities of life in the local community. They predict that the
company which has provided them will care for its patrons' comfort in other
directions too.. ..It is not too much to say that these stations of the Boston
and Albany Railroad, taking buildings and grounds together, are the best of
their class in the world; and the company which was wise enough to build
them has found them a good business investment.-^7
■^^This quote and those in the preceding paragraphs were taken from Sargent. "The Railroad-station
at Chestnut Hill," pp. 159-160.
•^^This quote and those in the preceding paragraphs were taken from Sargent, "The Railroad-station
at Chestnut Hill," pp. 159-160.
57
Sargent's words are both self-congratulatory, advisory, and a clear statement of the
program's purpose.
Charles Mulford Robinson's "A Railroad Beautiful" appeared in House and Garden
in 1902, describing the landscaping program of the Newton Circuit. According to him, the
approach to the Chestnut Hill station:
There is a park like approach, roads and path winding luxuriously down to
the little station building, where a stunning stone arch throws its protecting
cover from wind and rain over the carriage drive. The street is not visible
from the railroad, and the little park is graded gradually to the low level of
the station. Two noble old willows adorn a stretch of lawn, and the
shrubbery here has been planted with unusual skill and artistic excellence.-^^
Robinson also commented on the motives for such a station, and the pattern of the Circuit
stations as appearing almost hidden.
One can imagine a business man choosing Chestnut Hill for the
thoroughness with which the work of beautifying the road has been under
taken— for what is done here must be more for the road than for the place—
and as, again, to draw attention to the tendency to conceal the station, in the
view of the town, rather than to emphasize its presence.-^^
In the same manner Frank Arnold's observed in his Suburban Life article in 1905,
that at Chestnut Hill, one had the impression "that the station is nestling in the midst of a
lovely park." Through landscaping, "all signs of the proximity of a railroad are lost sight
of entirely on the approach, and it is not until one finds himself fairly on the platform, that
the rails themselves become a reality."-''0 Like the station at Aubumdale, the desired effect
was that the stations were to be as unobtrusive and as natural as possible, rather than
disruptive reminders of the train and its associations. The stations and grounds were meant
■+8Robinson, "A Railroad Beautiful," as reprinted in Tlie Newton Journal.
■+^obinson, "A Railroad Beautilul," as repnnted in The Newton Journal.
5(^his quote and that in the preceding paragraph were taken from Arnold, p. 22.
58
to evoke feelings of comfort, refinement, and status, for those who resided in such a
location, and for those viewing it from the train, as well. Residents, in a sense, had the
best of both worlds; the ease of convenient and frequent access to the city, and the
railroad's efforts to accommodate them comfortably, and resf)ectfully.
The Smaller Newton Stations
Richardson was commissioned to do a number of smaller stations for Newton as
part of the Circuit, "flag-stop'" or "flag-depot" stations, in the Eliot, Waban, and Woodland
sections of the town. These areas were little developed, serving the residents of a small
number of large estates, or in the case of Woodland, a country club-a similar clientele to
those at Chestnut Hill and Aubumdale. The stations were also built in anticipation of
further development. According to Van Rensselaer the three stations were awarded to
Richardson's office in October, 1884, but were not all completed until 1888. They were
simple and small designs, all with one general waiting room, a baggage room, bathrooms,
and ticket room. Built of granite, laid in ledge-stone masonry, trimmed with sandstone,
and having slate roofs, they displayed similar elements to other designs. They are of
particular interest in that their design and appearance seem to have taken precedence over
the practical needs of the railroad. As expensive small stone stations serving a relatively
small clientele, they had to be valuable to the railroad primarily for presentation and
promotion of the Boston & Albany.
Frequent mention was made of progress on the stations in contemporary
newspapers. In the May 15, 1886 issue of 77?^ Newton Journal of an construction update
was given for the station at Waban.
A depot is in process of construction at Beacon street, and will be completed
in several weeks. It is of Braggville granite, with brownstone trimmings.
The ticket office is located in the comer instead of the centre, as in most
stations, and there is but one waiting room. The interior finish will be
cypress and spruce. Depots will also be located at Washington and
59
Boylston streets, and will probably be erected the present year. They will
be of stone, and similar to the Beacon street depot."^ '
While in The Newton Graphic, the same day, it was reported that "the grounds of
the new depots will be laid out and ornamented similar to those of other stations on the
main line in Newton. "-''2
A month following its opening (FIGURE 13), the station at Waban was described
as "a 'thing of beauty and an honor to Newton. The grounds have been artistically laid out
and graded, and are very attractive."53 In April, 1888, mention was made that in Waban
Efforts are being made to have all the property owners here unite in having a
topographical survey made of the desirable building sites, and engage Mr.
Frederick Law Olmsted to lay it out.5-*
An article that March described how Waban had become known as an area with the
most desirable building sites in Newton, anticipating perhaps "a hundred or more fine
residences being built here in the course of a year or two." (FIGURE 14) The article
described the depot, promoting Waban.
...after the completion of a most substantial and expensive stone depot, [the
B & A] commenced running regular trains, making thirty trips from
Boston. ..every week day.. ..It is on the line of what is known as the Circuit
road.. .The river Charles is within a quarter of a mile, thus affording an
opportunity for boating, bathing and fishing. The land is elevated,
undulating, and location extremely healthy. Fine old shade trees,
comprising elms, oaks, lindens, butternut and tall pines, lend variety, afford
shade, and form picturesque elements to the beautiful scenery for which this
place is noted. In fact, through all the Newtons now known as the Garden
City, there is no portion which excels Waban in natural beauty. The Boston
and Albany Corporation, with its usual generosity and liberal spirit, has laid
out the grounds about the pretty stone station with trees, fiowers, shrubs
and grassy lawns, forming quite a little part, which is destined to be a
5^The Newton Journal 15 May 1886.
^'^The Newton Graphic 15 May 1886.
^^The Newton Graphic 11 September 1886.
^■^The Newton Graphic 6 Apnl 1888.
60
constant delight to its patrons.'^-'^
New residents were described by their respective occupations and the stately costs of their
attractive residences. Speaking of Waban, Walter Berg in Buildinf^s anJ Structures of
American Railroads noted that the "interior ground-plan has several objectionable features,"
which— unfortunately— he neglected to mention.-"*^' He surely disagreed with the bathrooms
opening directly into the general waiting room, which he had found objectionable at
Woodland, along with arguing that the facade of the station at Woodland
...is designed entirely from an architectural standpoint. There are stone seats
under the sloping roof, alongside of the bay-window extension to the main
building, which serves as ticket-office. The interior is divided into a general
waiting-room; a baggage-room; a ladies" toilet-room; a gentlemen's toilet
room; and a ticket-office. The arrangement of the ground-plan has a large
number of very objectionable features.-''^
Frank Arnold had described the station at Woodland where "one meets with almost
primeval conditions. A flat stretch of country, a small but an artistic station, which one
comes upon almost unexpectedly, and which seems set down in a virgin wilderness, so
surrounded is it by the green turf, blossoming hedges and native birch and willow ."58
(FIGURE 15) An Atlas from 1895 showed virtually no development in the area.
5577i^ Newton Graphic 9 March 1888.
56Berg, p. 277.
57Berg, p. 277.
58Amold, p. 22.
61
BRIGHTON
Brighton was technically a village in the western section of Boston, located close to
Newton, and part of the Circuit Railroad. Van Rensselaer gave July, 1884, as the date of
commission for Richardson; construction was completed by Norcross Brothers in 1885.
An expenditure of $ 13,267 was listed in the B&A Annual Report for 1885 corresponding
to this, but the total cost was probably more. Residents of Brighton who lived in the area
where the depot was located, were of a similar background as the majority of residents in
Newton. An atlas from 1895 shows virtually no development near the station. (RGURE
16) Brighton was closer to Boston, affording a shorter commute.
The Brighton station was rectangular in plan. It was built on an embankment, with
a porch sloping down to the tracks, covering stairs and providing a shelter beneath.
(FIGURE 17) A central track-side ticket booth separated the men and women's waiting
rooms with bathrooms in each, while two tiny rooms next to the men's room provided for
telegraph, and baggage. Doors exited track-side from the baggage room, the men's room,
and the women's room. A hipped roof covered the main rectangular structure with a
extended plane on an angle down to the tracks; this plane contained an eyelid dormer
allowing light below. The materials were Braggville granite laid in random ashlar
masonry, trimmed with Lx)ngmeadow "freestone" sandstone. Olmsted was responsible for
the landscaping.59
An article appeared in the Newton Graphic on July 18, 1885, that had been
reprinted from the Brighlon Independent, and offers an informative and unusually critical
account of the new station, "thrown op)en to the public at 2:05 pm. on Monday, July 6."
The interiors were described as rich in appearance, "the lower part being of southern
cypress wood the upper part of spruce and hard pine, the whole being finished in oil."
^^See Ochsner, Complete Works, p. 354.
62
Information was given about the individuals responsible for roofing and plumbing/'O
"Elegant drinking fountains of Tennessee marble" were in each waiting room, with the
"latest improved filters," as well as "modem improvements" in the bathrooms, and "very
neat" gas fixtures.
However, the overall tone of the article was not flattering and "While much can be
said in praise of the building, a great deal more can be said against it," and the author
summed up the project as "a very costly affair [and] badly planned in every respect."
Problems cited included the unnecessarily large size of the ladies' room (with the men's
room sacrificed for telegraph and baggage rooms); the windows were too low and offered
poor ventilation; the ticket office was both "a f>erfect sweat box, [and] at the same
time.. .dark and gloomy"; and the baggage room door was "situated that, owing to the way
the grounds have been laid out, all the baggage will have to be transported entirely around
one end of the building". Other problems included no overhead protection on three sides of
the building, and "owing to the snowguards on the roof, in the winter time the gutters and
gutter pipes will freeze up |andj the platform and vicinity will be covered with ice all the
time." Also, since the telegraph operator was often in charge of the ticket office, with a
distance between them, "the latter's duties are thereby increased." The article ended on a
sarcastic note, stating that in regards to the ticket and telegraph operator, that "in
compensation for this, his wages have been reduced $20 a month." Interestingly, the
architect is never mentioned in this article, despite criticisms specifically directed at his
work.6i
A number of the problems the article cited conflicted with Walter Berg's
suggestions for successful station design: a separate location of telegraph and ticket offices
60 "The roofing was sublet to W.J. Maguire, who did a ver>^ neat job. The plumbing was also
sublet to I.N. Tucker of Allston." "The New Depot in BnghU)n," The Newton Graphic 18 July 1885.
6 1'The New Depot in Bnghlon" The Newlon Graphic 18 July 1885.
63
with only one employee, and adequate coverage for protecting people from weather. The
lack of protective eaves was uncommon in Richardson's station designs. The location of
the baggage room track-side in itself would not conflict with Berg's recommendations, but
according to the article, it was because of the way the grounds were laid, that the problem
arose. It was unusual for the women's waiting room to be larger than the men's, and in
no place else does this appear in Richardson's station designs; the reasoning is unclear.
Little mention is made of the landscaping in contemporary accounts.
STATUS OF NEWTON AND BRIGHTON STATIONS
In Newton, Aubumdale Station was destroyed in the early 1960s when the
Massachusetts Turnpike was constructed, and while Chestnut Hill remains a commuter
stop, the station was also demolished for a parking lot around 1960, as were the flag-stop
stations at Hiot and Waban.CHGURE 18) The station at Brighton was also torn down for
the Massachusetts Turnpike.
The only station in Newton to remain is Woodland, but it has been neglected, and is
today boarded up and used for storage. It is ironic that the stations that received the most
attention, were the ones lost.
64
WELLES LEY HILLS
Just West of Newton lay Wellesley; formerly known as West Needham, the town
was incorporated in April, 1881, with a population of nearly 2,600/'2 Wellesley Hills,
otherwise known as North Needham (part of West Needham), was the location of
RichardJion's last train station, completed in 1886. Wellesley followed a similar pattern of
growth as seen in Newton, and prided itself and promoted its status as a prosperous
community, made up of Boston's elite businessmen, much the same as in Newton. But
again, like Newton, Wellesley had other lower-class residents, mostly industrial workers,
who worked and lived within their own distinct areas. Many of these would be displaced
when the town made a concerted effort to eliminate factories, transforming them for
educational use (see below).
An article in The Wellesley Courant of November 5, 1885, described the prospect
of a new downtown railroad, direct to Boston.
...its benefit in every way possible to the town would be great, more so
than could any other event liable to occur.. ..It will naturally bring into the
town many new residents and manufacturing industries of which this town
has long felt the need. Nature has done all that could be desired to make
this as beautiful and healthy a town as any of those suburban to the great
metropolis of New England. ...('-^
The very first passenger train to Boston had arrived in July, 1834. From that time
on West Needham quickly became known for its "beautiful and healthful air."64 With a
relatively short 45 minute commute to Boston, the town attracted wealthy businessmen,
bankers and lawyers buying summer homes, with some residing year-round. Slowly
commuters" residences began to coexist with the established farming community. West
62Hon. Joseph E. FLske, History of the Town of Wellesley (Boston: The Pilgrim Press, 1917) 82.
f'^The Wellesley Courant 5 November 1885.
^-••Eh^abeth Hmchliffc, Five Pounds Currency, Three Pounds of Corn: Wellesley' s Centennial
Slorv (Town ol Wellesley, Massachusetts, 1981) 27.
65
Needham also acquired a reputation as a place for convalescents, particularly for those with
consumption.
With the influx of businessmen and their money, large properties began to be
divided up and developed. The name Wellesley came from a wealthy man named
Hunnewell, who adapted his family name of Welles to "Wellesley" in naming his estate.
Hunnewell worked in banking and railroads and, with his love of gardening and nature, he
transformed a neglected pasture into a massive and unique collection of plants from
America and abroad. The gardens were opened to the public and received many visitors,
including horticulturists from Europe.<j5
Through the mid-lSOOs, West Needham was a town of dichotomies. Eager to
expand and stimulated by its wealthy and industrious residents, it was also home to
progressive endeavors in communal living and education, and still to the farmers who had
originally established the area.^'^' Farming continued strong through the decades following
the war, and the town remained isolated and rustic, scarcely changed from a century
before. In 1874 a small number of gas street lamps were introduced, although kerosene still
illuminated most paths and streets; the first telephone arrived in 1877. A building boom
would occur in the town shortly after this, and by 1880, the population had only reached
65HinchIiffe, p. 28.
6f>North Needham, which would become Wellesley Hills, saw its first proposed housmg
development in the mid-mneteenlh century: "Bostonvillc." It was the vision ol Daniel Aver, inspired by
the success ot the railroads. The plan was tor "...delightlul and attractive homes" lo cover 200 acres, with
two railroad depots; o\ er 300 lots were measured, and included among them a meeting house, a seminary ,
shoe factory . tirehouses, schoolhouses and a common. Visibly publicized and promoted, Boslonville was
unable to raise money, sustain interest, or clear land titles, and only two houses were e\er built. Wellesley
Hills also saw John and Mar\ Sawyer's expenment in ctx)p)crative living in 1858, located close to the tirst
Wellesley Hills depot. In their house "Eyne" was "high thmking and plain living". The house would
t)ecome a stop tor such visitors as Hamet Beecher Stowe, Whittier, Channing, and Sumner, along with less
traditional guests; it was also a station on the underground railroad.
66
2,716.67
The last of the notable wealthy men to come to Wellesley was Henry Fowie Durant
from New Hampshire, a Harvard alumnus and a shrewd Boston trial lawyer. With his
wife and son they made their summer home in West Needham, acquiring over 300 acres of
land around Lake Waban. Following the death of his son from diphtheria, Durant
announced plans for the education of women and he established the Wellesley Female
Seminary, the future Wellesley College with classes beginning in 1875.
Wellesley was not without its factories, although the greater part of the mills and
factories were on the Newton side of the river. Wellesley village was the home of the
Turner & Smart Shoe Factory, and the Lovewell Shoe Factory, employing many out-of-
town workers. Wellesley Village was dominated by the Lovewell Factory during the
second half of the 19th century, which was followed by the building of other factories. As
the business became larger in 1875 and modernized, it began to be seen as a nuisance to the
town.
Wellesley 's Separation from Needham
By the 1870s the town had separated itself from Needham proper, defiantly calling
itself Wellesley. The many wealthy and prominent people who had moved there wished to
distinguish themselves from the eastern area of Needham whose residents they viewed as
under-educated, under-achieving, and under-endowed; they sought to govern
themselves.68 |n a petition for separation, Wellesley was described by one of its prominent
(^''Oiilline Map of I lie Commonwealth of Massachusetts with populations in 1880 (Rand Aver> &
Compan>, 1882). Harvard University.
6>*An extraordinary and eccentnc resident, William Emerson Baker carried to an extreme the self-
mdulgence and exlrav agance seen among the allluent in the area at the time. Having amassed a tortune in
the sewing-machine business, he bought up a large amount ol land from man% small farms, and in this
created an enormous arulicial lake. On this estate he created w hat \\a.s a combination world's lair,
amasement park, and museum. This included man-made caverns and lakes, underground nvers and fish,
swans and bears, a castle and windmills, towers and coaches, steamboats, Greek Statues, Italian gardens,
lountains and bowling alleys, grottoes, greenhouses, a saloon, a chapel and a crystal tower. He also had his
67
residents.
The charm of the Town of Wellesley consists in its refined rural
atmosphere, its pleasant homes, its delightful drives and its beautiful
landscaped scenery, and no enlarged description of its enchanting outlooks,
its elegant residences, its public buildings, its hills and vales, its calm
waters and rugged ledges can be otherwise than futile and unsatisfactory .69
Something that did not fit into this image of serenity was the four-story wooden shoe
factory, with its loud and abrasive whistle, shattering the town's peace. To the residents of
Wellesley 's rescue came Hunnewell, owner of the grand gardens, who along with Mrs.
Durant— co-founder of Wellesley college— bought the pair of factories, tore one of them
down, and made the other building into a dormitory for the college.
Once Wellesley formally separated from Needham in 1881 , progress began in
instating modem conveniences. A water commission was established within three years,
municipal street lights were installed every 125 feet, concrete sidewalks constructed, a fire
department established, and illuminating gas introduced. Streets were laid out, and a park
commission organized. A small hotel, the Elm Park, was renovated to attract wealthy
summer visitors. Every expense and care was taken to impress those who came to visit,
and the unattractive railroad stations were to be replaced with new designs, one by H.H.
Richardson.
In the first issue of a weekly paper,ri^ Wellesley Courant in 1885, it was
proclaimed that
...few places in Massachusetts offer greater inducements to one who desires
a pleasant home than does Wellesley. Within easy reach of a large city and
surrounded by social and educational advantages unsurpassed, there are few
towns its superior, either in material or intellectual wealth. Its advantages
own railroad run to the nearby Ridge Hill Railroad Station, and tried but tailed to have his estate set oil as a
separate borough in itsell. He bought trom the 1876 Centennial Exposition a 159 room building, and
brought It, piece-b\ -piece, to be reconstructed at the entrance of his "farm", w here it was renamed the Hotel
Wellesley. His guests included royalty, paying public, and hundreds of under-pnvileged children w ho had
been treated by Baker to a week's stay at his estate.
69Hinchliffe, p. 50.
68
are too many and too varied to admit of special notice at this time, but the
imposing structures that comprise what is known as Weliesiey College, the
library, a princely gift to the town from a single citizen, the beautiful estates
within its limits that in their summer dress make Weliesiey so attractive, are
some of its adornments. Surely a good local paper is the one thing
lackina.7o
■&■
In a plate from Robinson's Atlas for 1888 of Weliesiey Hills, modest settlement appears
around the depot.'^ '(FIGURES 19 & 20) A post office sat next to the depot, a school a few
streets away, as well as the Elm Park Hotel in the other direction, next to the Unity Church.
Otherwise, the area was entirely residential, with generous lots northwest of the tracks and
depot, and more clustered and dense settlement in the southeast.
The Weliesiey Hills station by Richardson replaced the previous station not out of
necessity, but to suit similar needs that his designs served in Newton— it was meant to
impress. Weliesiey itself was founded by people who wanted to believe that the town was
exceptional, that it was home to an exclusive, prosperous population that no longer wished
to be associated with those less distinguished residents of West Needham. These demands
called for a remarkable entrance into the town and Richardson's station and Olmsted's
landscaping provided this gateway, with an appeal similar to those stations found in
Newton. Commuters could feel that their suburb was special, and the railroads recognized
this desire in the attention paid to the station.
THE WELLESLEY HILLS DEPOT
The commission for the Weliesiey Hills Station, Richardson's last for the B & A,
came in July 1885, according to Van Rensselaer. Construction was begun in September of
the same year, and completed in January, 1886, at a cost of $ 10,054. The station replaced
70"The New Railrciad to Boston,"77w Weliesiey CoiiranI 5 No\ ember 1885.
''^Robinson s Atlas of Norfolk County. Weliesiey Hills, Plate 35 (Ne\s York: 1888). Weliesiey
Free Library.
69
an earlier undistinguished wooden station. Wellesley Hills was one of three Boston and
Albany Circuit Railroad stations to serve Wellesley, the other two being Wellesley Farms,
and Wellesley, both designed after Richardson's death by his successor firm, Shepley,
Rutlan and Coolidge.
A smaller station similar to those in Newton, the plan was rectangular, measuring
21 X 40 ft.72, with two round projections at both track-side comers.(FlGURE 21 ) A
general waiting room, almost square, formed the center of the plan, with men's and
women's bath and rest rooms to the sides. Next to the men's room, occupying the circular
track-side comer, was a baggage room, while the reverse track-side comer, next to the
women's room, was the ticket office. Two doors provided an entrance to the waiting
room, and two doors directly opposite provided exits. The baggage room could only be
entered from a outside, track-side door. A sloping hipped roof contained two gables, one
track-side and one opposite, with three identical windows. The roof extended outward to
form wide sheltering eaves, supported by wood posts and brackets, and then extended into
a plane down to the track at lower level, somewhat similar as at the station in Brighton.
The building was made of granite, laid in ledge-stone masonry, had sandstone trim on
doors, windows, and horizontal bands, and topped with a slate roof.73
Walter Berg in Buildings and Structures of American Railroads briefly described
the station at Wellesley Hills, categorizing it as a "flag depot," one of the smaller passenger
stations. Berg wrote of the interior, "it is cut up considerably so as to give a general
waiting-room; a ticket-office; a baggage-room; a ladies' waiting-room, with toilet-room
attached; and a smoking room, with toilet-room attached. "74 Berg did not specify further
72Berg, p. 277.
73See Ochsner, Complete Works, p. 400.
74Berg, p. 277.
70
assessment, but one might suspect that he thought the small size of the station did not
comfortably accommodate the required needs. However, the station's plan does not appear
to conflict with Berg's general recommendations for stations of this type.
in his discussion of the Wellesley Hills station, Frank Arnold in Suburban Life
praised the "beautiful effect of street planting" found along the track-side of the fence
dividing the railroad property from the highway, with "shrubs of almost every description
grow[ing| in great profusion." (RGURE 22) As in other discussions of railroad
gardening, Arnold praised plantings for hiding elements of the railroad:
On the street side, a noble row of elms and maples, with here and there a
walnut tree, forms a continuous side of shade, the combination of
shrubbery and trees being such as practically to obscure the railroad track
from the boulevard. Whenever possible, every bit of natural scenic beauty
has been turned to good account by the ever watchful gardener. It may be
that a tiny lake, fed by some hidden spring, is brought into the general
scheme, thereby adding an element of unusual beauty to the general plan.^-'^
STATUS OF WELLESLEY HILLS STATION
The small station at Wellesley Hills remains a commuter stop and is home to three
businesses— a dry cleaners, a coffee shop, and a watch repair shop. (FIGURES 23 & 24)
The station has suffered some dramatic alterations, with its street elevation severely
compromised. It is surrounded by a parking lot, centered in a very busy and congested
part of town. Considering its location, the station could be the site for many alternative
uses, and would be an excellent candidate for restoration, although its location and the
value of the land puts the building in jeopardy.
^-'T'his quote and those m the preceding paragraph were taken from Arnold, p. 22.
71
NORTH EASTON
North Easton in the 1880s was more a village than a suburb, yet its situation was
unique as a station commission for Richardson. (FIGURE 25) Part of a series of
commissions for the Ames family, the station served a similar purpose to those stations in
Newton, Brighton and Wellesley Hills. The difference lay in the fact that it served to
promote a single family instead of a community.
North Easton is located about 20 miles southwest of Boston in Bristol County.
Before the arrival of the Ames family in 1803, the "town" was little more than a crossroads
lined with a few wooden structures, and was of little or no importance. Attracted by the
area's barren land and abundant water resources from ponds and streams, the location was
chosen by Oliver Ames, Sr., (1779-1863) as the site for an iron works and shovel factory,
that would eventually become the village's main industry. In 1826 and 1828 additional
stone shops were constructed, and in 1852 an immense "Long Shop" of over 500 feet was
built. This large complex of simple stone industrial buildings formed the center of the
village in the nineteenth century. By mid-century, the Ameses had twenty-four factories,
producing three-hundred shovels per day, earning tax-free profits of roughly $ 324,000 per
year.76
The elder Oliver Ames and two of his sons, Oakes ( 1804- 1873) and Oliver Jr.
(1807-1877), who became partners with their father in 1844, were to become the world's
largest producer of shovels, plows, and other earth-moving implements. The Ames firm
supplied the tools for western expansion in the United States, and during the Civil War saw
their government contracts doubled from four to eight million dollars. During peak
operations, more than five hundred workers were employed in the factories. The result was
a sizeable family fortune for the Ameses, and with it, considerable social influence and
^^Larrj J. Homolka, "Henry Hohson Ridiardson and the "Ames Memorial Buildings " Ph.D.
Dissertation, Harvard University', 1976: 25.
72
responsibility. North Easton had become a single-family factory town, its welfare largely
dependent on Ames enterprises.
Despite the family's unprecedented new wealth, their Calvinist ethic of thrift and
imyielding work was not immediately compromised, and life in the village during the
1860s was described by observers as austere, self-denying, and parsimonious (these
qualities understood as applying equally to entrepreneurs and workers.) The firm's offices
were actually attached to the senior Ames's dwelling. Later Ameses would describe life in
his era as follows:
In his day, the town was awakened at ten minutes before five by the shop
bell. The factories started at seven, by lamplight in the winter, and with an
hour out at noon for dinner, continued until six, making a ten-hour work
day. Usually, however, his sons and grandsons returned to the office in the
evening to catch up with their correspondence. ..discuss business, and go
over the accounts with the head bookkeeper. At nine, the shop bell sounded
a curfew to advise bed time.77
The situation of the Ameses in some respects resembled architectural patronage "by
the Medici in Florence during the early 15th century," or even a medieval monastery where
bells signalled daily tasks and prayers.^x While North Easton had not been organized as an
exclusively industrial town like Lowell, the element was there, as was some paternalism,
seen more overtly in other industrial towns. Oliver Ames Sr. was described as having a
fatherly interest in the welfare of his employees, having abolished the village rum shop in
the 1830s, and in the 1840s remodeling several obsolete wooden factory buildings to
provide housing for immigrant Irish laborers. ^9 There is no evidence of labor unrest,
discord, or strikes in the town during the 19th century. Oliver Ames, Sr.'s public persona
was patriarchal, even kingly, and when his two sons became partners in the firm, there was
77Homolka, p. 26.
78Homolka , p. 15.
79Homolka, p. 27.
73
an understanding that their father would never be over-ruled in management. With their
father's death in 1863, the brothers largely rejected the paternal and provincial stance in
business and community dealings, instead focusing their enterprises more nationally, and
bringing greater wealth, prominence, and ultimately controversy and scandal to themselves.
These events were to become motivating forces initiating Richardson's "memorial"
commissions for the town.
The Ames family became involved in railroads beginning in 1855, when a rail line—
the Easton Branch Railroad, later part of the Old Colony— was built to connect their
factories with Stoughton and Boston. Oakes Ames was elected to Congress in 1862 as a
Republican, and as a member of the Committee on the Pacific Railroad, he became
involved with the plan to link the east and west coasts by railroad. His brother Oliver later
became acting President (1866), and then President of the Union Pacific in 1868. Both
Oliver and Oakes were exfwrienced in railroad investments and together managed the
eastern portion of the project, completing it in 1869.80 Oakes Ames career suffered from
scandal,^ ' and it has been suggested that the recruitment of Richardson for the town's
commissions was to appease the public for his reputed wrongdoings.82
Before the 1870s, the architecture of the village was undistinguished, with a drab
factory complex at its center. The stone factory buildings were utilitarian two-story
structures only articulated by repeated window openings; they were of sound construction
and simply expressive of their industrial function. (FIGURE 26) The first attempt to create
public architecture was in 1869 with a new public high school paid for by the Ameses.
This conspicuous structure combined the Second Empire and High Victorian styles, and
SOHomoIka, p. 28.
8 'Congressman Oakes Ames was censured by the House of Representati\ es for offering Union
Pacific stcx;k to other members.
82Suggested by Larrj Homolka in his dissertation.
74
undoubtedly drew attention as the only building for miles around of its kind. The building
would have suggested to the viewer that "higher cultural ambitions and civic ideals were at
work in North Easton.''^-'
While at the same time high styles were demonstrated in the private homes of the
Ameses. The family homes evolved from Federal, to Greek Revival, to Italianate. Of the
younger generation, F.L. Ames's house became quite a showplace, begun when he was
only twenty-four years old, and modeled in the tradition of the English Country house,
near his cousin Governor Oliver Ames's Second Empire mansion, built in 1862.s-^ There
was a marked distinction between the landscaped estates and mansions of the third
generation of Ameses, from those single homes of their fathers and grandfathers along
North Main Street. The family's properties nearly enclosed the village in the shape of a
horse-shoe open at the south. Although the Ames families had only been in North Easton
for 50 years, their homes and estates took on a permanence and continuity usually only
associated with landed gentry.
Following Richardson's commissions, the town's center focused his Memorial Hall
and library. A short distance away and close to the depot were the Ameses factories and
laborers' residences.
NORTH EASTON'S OLD COLONY STATION
The original depot was probably little more than a shed near the factories; in 1886
an observer described the changes.
The visitor who came to Easton a few years ago by cars and stopped at
North Easton, received an unpleasant impression of the place at once by
alighting in a dark and smoky station, and seeing only dismal waiting rooms
and surroundings singularly unattractive. He would now, however, in
alighting find himself upon the platform of one of the most beautiful small
^^Homolka, p. 36.
8-+F.L. Ames was Oliver Ames, Sr.'s son.
75
railroad stations in the country .^-'^
As director of the Old Colony Railroad, F. L. Ames personally commissioned the
station in 1881 , which he presented as a gift to the railroad upon its completion.
Richardson secured the commission in November of that year, and construction began in
1882. Olmsted began the landscaping in August, 1883, and completed the work in April,
1884.
The design consisted of a rectangle parallel to the tracks on the east side. (FIGURE
27) The interior was symmetrically arranged with a lobby and ticket room in the center,
of)ening into separate men's and women's waiting rooms, the latter including a dressing
room. Both waiting rooms contained built-in benches. On each end of the waiting rooms
were respective bathrooms, but on the men's side most of this space was given over to
baggage. There was a spiral staircase leading to an additional room on the second floor,
which may have been an apartment for the station-master or for storage. On the track side
the hipped roof with two low dormers extended to create a shelter supported by wooden
posts. On the opposite side, facing a pond, a projected hipped roof extended to form a
porte cochere, supported by a broad open arch, sprung from the ground, set in large
masonry piers, echoing two more arches behind in the walls of that elevation. The same
arches formed the wall opposite on the track-side elevation as well, encompassing
windows and doorways to the platform. Brown sandstone provided trim for doors and
windows, a horizontal band, and water table. TTie main material was granite, rusticated in
random ashlar masonry, with a red tiled roof; the same materials were used for the library
and Memorial Hall. Wood framed members, stained dark, were carved in the form of
animal heads— resembling wolves— on the exteriors, and on the transoms of the arched
85Homolka, p. 251.
76
windows of the waiting rooms.R^' Benches were carved with wooden lions' heads on the
arm-rests. S7 (FIGURE 28)
Van Rensselaer described the three massive arches at the front of the station as
"giants doing striplings' service," but excused them as being "so simple yet so picturesque,
so dignified yet so rural looking."*^^ Walter Berg praised the Old Colony Depot stating that
"|t]he ground-plan layout and the architectural artistic features of the building are first-
class. "89 Berg believed a design should not compromise a station's practical and functional
requirements for aesthetics; and North Easton is one of the few stations by Richardson to
receive Berg's praise, perhaps because the plan demonstrated many of Berg's suggestions
for efficient station design.
The station was also selected as an example of successful station design in Bradford
Lee Gilbert's "Picturesque Suburban Railroad Stations" in Engineering Magazine of
December, 1891 . With a photograph of the carriage-side facade, Gilbert described the
...charming station at North Easton, Mass., on the Old Colony road. The
design is very effective. The wide arches at the porte-cochere and various
openings seem to start from the ground as a base. The building is of granite
with brown-stone trimmings.^o
Similarly to the Chestnut Hill station in Newton, the arches here are commented on
from observers as almost sprouting out of the earth, and with landscaping, could have
appeared as a natural outgrowth of its setting. Olmsted and Richardson had a keen
sensitivity to their sites, and wished to create the effect of a building simply growing out of
86Larr\ Homolka suggests these may be from Nordic sources.
87See Ochsner, Complete Works, p. 270.
8^hc quotes in this paragraph were taken from Van Rens.selaer, p. 98.
89Berg, p. 323.
90Gilben, pp. 337,345.
77
the earth. With landscaping serving in part to hide the less attractive elements of the
railroads, one would simply discover a lovely picturesque shelter. Instead of disrupting its
location, the station appeared as though it was found there naturally (perhaps growing
overnight), the stone materials only emphasizing this. As the station at North Eiaston sat
next to a pond, lying low and long, like its flat site, amidst trees and other plantings, it
could have appeared from the opposite side of the pond as merging with the landscape.
According to a letter from Fred Ames to F.L. Olmsted in 1884 mentioned some of the
plants for the site, these included hemlocks, junipers, creepers, and birches; and full and
leafy plane and locust trees.9i
Factory buildings were cleared from the site to accommodate Richardson's new
station, allowing it to merge with the nearby Ames estates. The building had the effect of
creating a screen between the estates and factories, serving not only as a gateway to the
village but also to the family's residences.92 Architecture and landscaping proved to serve
both the public environment and the Ameses' private needs.
STATUS OF OLD COLONY STATION
The Old Colony station at North E^ston has been a fortunate. After being closed,
abandoned and vandalized for years, the Ames family bought the station from the New
York Central Railroad for $ 15,000 in 1969, and gave it to the Easton Historical Society.
For some time it remained in a state of neglect, but has subsequently been restored. Apart
from the loss of the long passenger sheds, the station is in the best -maintained of all that
remain. (FIGURES 29 & 30) It appears that the town takes pride in the buildings built by
Richardson there, and were it not for the Historical Society and the Ames family, this
building would probably be at risk for demolition.
9lHomolka, p. 262.
92Homolka, p. 253.
78
CHAPTER FIVE: INDUSTRIAL CENTER,
RURAL STOPPING-POINT, AND ASPIRING SUBURB
79
CHAPTER FIVE: INDUSTRIAI. CENTER. RURAL STOPPING-POINT, AND
ASPIRING SUBURB
The three locales and stations described in this chapter varied in location from urban
to rural, but all had similar designs and, to some extent, similar users. The first place to be
discussed is Holyoke, which was an industrial center serving a very different clientele than
the stations discussed previously. Next is Palmer, a village in a rural part of western
Massachusetts, which served as a busy cross-roads to the west. The last town discussed
will be South Framingham that had suburban aspirations but more the character of a
commercial village, or small town.
HOLYOKE
Holyoke was established on the east bank of the Connecticut River in Western
Massachusetts, and by the 1840s the town was just entering the early stages of
industrialization. (FIGURE3I) It would struggle for years before attaining the dubious
distinction of becoming a full-fledged factory town. ' The antebellum period saw numerous
attempts to establish industry but all failed, and it was not until the Civil War and the years
following that investors achieved some degree of financial success by establishing paper
mills instead of cotton factories. The newly incorporated city was prosperous enough to
survive the impact of the Panic of 1873. Holyoke's business record for 1874 was
unequalled by any city its size in New England.2 The boom in the paper industry led to
'Holyoke had first attracted people for its animal furs, as colonist planters sought to make a
permanent settlement on the east bank of the Connecticut River in Western Massachusetts. In the late
eighteenth century a tra\eler journeying along the western bank of the Connecticut R]\cr would ha\e passed
a tiny farming \ illage s\ ith ample crops of ha\ , com, rye, potatcx:s and oat. This proMded a subsistence
economy, with Uxal farmers prcxlucing enough to meet their basic needs and a small surplus, which the\
brought to market at Northampton and Spnngficld, the region's pnncipal trade centers.
2 Constance McLaughlin Green, Holvolw. Massorhuselts: a Case History oftlie Industrial
Revolution in America (New Ha\en: Yale Unnersity, 1939) 138.
80
Holyoke's population growing from 14,000 in 1873 to 21,961 in 1880.^ Concomitantly,
Holyoke saw a construction boom in housing, and the establishment of subsidiary paper
factories; producing blank books, pads, boxes, envelopes, and paper mill machinery. ■+
From the very beginning of the town and increasingly as industry gathered force at
the end of the Civil War, a large proportion of Holyoke's residents were laborers, with no
savings and no means of livelihood apart from the mills. Wages in Holyoke were always
lower than in other factory towns and workers faced constant wage cuts, frequent
accidents, long hours, and poor housing.
Irish and French Canadians comprised the chief ethnic groups in Holyoke until
1900.^ Other laborers came from Scotland, England, and Germany, in the 1850s and
1860s mill heads imported such help, training and working them as hard as the law of
supply and demand permitted. Despite the shortage of trained help, particularly after the
Civil War, manufacturers had an endless source of supply in the numbers of unskilled who
arrived each year. Many of the new immigrants found working and living conditions better
than what they had known before regardless of the long hours at low wages.
With the spring of 1870 came a great wave of French Canadian immigrants lured by
rumors of employment. The Transcript described the scene at the first passenger depot:
They come with all their worldly goods packed in boxes and bundles and
the gents' room at the Connecticut Railroad depot is packed with their
effects till it looks like a wholesale warehouse. Leaving the bulk of the
articles at the depot, they start out with their arms full of bundles to find a
place to stop. Some have friends or relatives here. Many have spent their
-^Il"kovic and Tager, p. 16.
■* The character and conditions of labor in Holyoke differed somewhat from one industry to another,
the main calegones being textile operatives versus paper. There were comparatively few workers m the
paper mills; in 1869 all eleven Holyoke paper mills together employed fewer people than the Lyman
Textile Mills alone, with its 1,100 hands. Another difference in paper mills was that there was little
employment of minors, and of women. Green, p. 101.
-'^In the mid 1840s a devastating famine struck large regions of southern Ireland, spreading death and
misery' amongst an already impovenshed people, and initiating a massive emigration.
81
last cent to get here, expecting to find plenty of work on their arrival. A
crowd of emigrants arrived Thursday, having seen an advertisement of a
paper company for 1(X) rag cutters, and clamored to be directed to the mill.
Failing to find tenements, lodging rooms or work, .some of them have gone
on to Providence, Pawtucket and other points, but many have no money to
go further. Some have located at South Holyoke, and many have crowded
into "Canada Hill. "...A troop of them, big and little, are seen starting out on
foot form the depot after the arrival of nearly every through train from the
North.f*
In the later part of the nineteenth century Holyoke saw emigrants from Russia,
Poland, and Italy. While the Russian Jews and Italians tended to establish small shops, the
Poles entered the mills. Nearby Chicopee was home to the large Polish population.
Holyoke had always had a few Black residents from its beginning, and a few Chinese
students in the 1870s, but neither formed a substantial group. 7 By 1890 while the
percentage of foreign bom had shrunk slightly, Holyoke had the third highest percentage of
foreign population in the country— 47.67%— while native-bom Americans made up only
17.03 percent of the residents.^
Over half the population in Holyoke was employed in or about the mills. Because
of transportation limitations before 1880, most mill hands lived within half a mile of their
work or at the most two miles. Among the three largest national groups—the Irish, French
Canadians, and Germans— living in ethnic enclaves was the mle. Native New Englanders
were as self-contained as any of these groups. The remaining immigrant groups, too few in
6Green, p. 202. Of the 151 mill towns where child labor existed, between 5,000 and 6,(XX)
children under fifteen were estimated as employed in mills and shops, of w hich about 60 percent could read
or wnte. Green, p. 133. Mill owner Jared Bcebe reported in 1870 that there were thirty-three children under
15 years of age employed in his wcxilen mills, all of whom worked a full sixty-nme hour work week.
Green, p. 102. While there was no universal schedule of work, t)efore 1873 Holyoke paper makers worked
se\ent\-two hours a week at the most, and fifty -eight hours at the least, with less hours for women. Green,
p. 102'
^Green, p. 366.
8 Fall River, Massachusetts was first with 50. 15 per cent, and Duluth, Minnesota followed w ith
48.17 percent. Green, p. 368.
82
number to form separate neighborhoods, settled wherever space was found. These
neighborhoods permitted groups to preserve their religions, customs, and identities.
Occupations specific to ethnic groups often determined the locations of these
neighborhoods. The Irish in South Holyoke had settled there before the Germans, and in
the sixties French Canadians also came. By the seventies, "Tigertown," as it was named
for the rough Irishmen there, was polyglot, but the three groups did not mingle. Irish lived
in other areas, near the Hadley Thread mill and the paper mills beyond, in mill tenements,
the "Hill" or the "Patch", while the French Canadians herded together in "Frenchville".^
South Holyoke near the Germania mills was home to the Germans, who for forty
years had lived apart from their neighbors. Germans were largely skilled workmen, devout
Lutherans, and saw themselves as cultured beyond the uncouth "Paddies," as the Irish
were called, or the poverty-stricken French Canadians, characterized as the "Chinese of the
Eastern States" by the State Commissioner of Labor in 1881.'(> The Germans found both
group's Catholicism equally unattractive. The German community through the Lutheran
Church, the Tumverein, the German Benevolent Society, and their Lutheran parochial
school was largely self-sufficient, and took pride in their homes with window boxes,
gardens, and exacting standards of cleanliness.
The Patch was the home of the poorest Irish, the newly arrived, unskilled, day-
laborers. In the 1850s it was common for a new arrival to construct for himself a crude
shelter on the land of the Water Power Company. These were usually half board, half dug-
out, often only one room and a loft without windows. As a family moved up, the
abandoned house would be occupied by other newcomers. One pump and one oven served
many households, and firewood salvaged from the river by the men of the Patch was
^Green, p. 112.
1 OGreen , p. 369.
83
divided evenly among everyone. i > Plumbing was an unknown luxury, and squalor and
filth commonplace. A report from the Bureau of Statistics of Labor in 1 875 described a
scene:
Holyoke has more and worse large tenement houses than any manufacturing
town of textile fabrics in the state. ...Our agents visited some tenements
having bedrooms into which neither air nor light could penetrate, as there
were no windows and no means of ventilation, and some of them were
actually filthy. It is no wonder that the death-rate, in 1872 was greater in
Holyoke than in any large town in Massachusetts, excepting Fall River, and
if an epidemic should visit them now, in the state they are in, its ravages
would be great. '2
With the town's dramatic growth and high percentage of foreign bom, there was
probably less social interaction than elsewhere. Residents were devoted to their own
churches and were too occupied with their struggles for sustenance to have time for leisure
activities. Cultural societies were formed by every group early on, further perpetuating
differences. Leisure clubs were generally not opened to Catholics, and when land was
bought on the river bank for tennis courts and a ball-field, they were enjoyed only by the
Protestant minority. '-^ When the well-to-do spent their holidays at the seashore or in the
mountains, the mill population sat on the benches in the public parks, and later in the 1890s
took trolley rides in the evenings. '-^
1 'Green, p. 1 13.
'2Green, pp. 116-117. The board had been specialiy apptiinted in 1866, e.stablishing regulations
to cut down sources of disease, pubhshing rules for keeping alleys and streets free from offal and garbage,
for cleaning \auits, and building drains and scwers.Green, p. 1 18. Holyoke had seen two smallpox
epidemics in 1870 and 1873, spreading facilitated more easily from infected rags in the paper mills, making
rapid inroads in the community. Green, pp. 1 18-1 19 High mortality rates came from diphthena, measles,
scarlet fe\ er, consumption and cholera.
'-"^Green, p. 374.
' -Kjreen, p. 375.
84
CONNECTICUT RIVER RAILROAD STATION
Besides his position as vice president and member of the board of the Boston &
Albany Railroad, James Rumrill also served as a director of the Connecticut River
Railroad, which led to Richardson's commission for the station at Holyoke that, according
to Van Rensselaer, was awarded in November, 1883, with construction the following year
and completion in 1885.
Holyoke offered a startling contrast to those suburban locales found along the
Newton Circuit. Were it not for Rumrill's position with the Connecticut River Railroad, it
seems most unlikely that Richardson, or any other similarly esteemed architect, would have
designed a station for this city.
An atlas of the town for 1894 showed the depot was located amidst
industry. i-XFIGURES 32 & 33) The site lay close to two canals and was surrounded by
factories and mills. The station was directly across from The Holyoke Water Power
Company on one side, and the Daley's Hotel presumably for visiting businessmen on the
other. One Atlas plate featuring industry and business in the area showed a paper company
and the post office close to the station, and directly across the canal (easily crossed by a
bridge), the huge operations of the Lyman Mills, the Whiting Paper Company and the
Hadley Paper company among others. Another plate showed two nearby hotels, a bank,
the "Endeavor Mission Church", schools, and a park. (FIGURE 34) Across the two
canals, away from the station, was the center of town containing City Hall, banks,
churches, schools, and two parks, one along the water. The nexus of Holyoke's industry
was between the two canals, close to the station. A "Bird's Eye View" Map from the
1880s showed the location of industry in the city. (RGURE 35) Green's map of immigrant
neighborhoods in the late 19th century (FIGURE 36) showed that this same area was home
^ ^Topographical Atlas, County of Hampden. Massachusetts Palmer and Holyoke, (Spnnglield
Mass.: L.J. Richards & Co, 1894) Palmer Public Library .
85
to those groups, and a photo showing the construction of the station in 1884 showed
apartment-type residences in the background. '<' (RGURE 37)
There appears to have been no landscaping at the site. In such an urban and
industrial setting, it is not surprising that efforts to beautify the grounds were not
considered worthwhile. A photograph dated 1888 from Van Rensselaer's book reveals the
slightest bit of grass along the edge of the yard but no other plantings. The station at
Holyoke is the least mentioned of all Richardson's stations, due, to a large degree, to its
locale.
The station was unique in one feature, an "immigrants" room," with its own
separate entrance and exit. The room was similar in size to the baggage room, about a third
in size of the general waiting room, and was not segregated by sex. The general waiting
room was mostly, although not exclusively for men (see below), while the adjoining ladies
room was smaller, and gave certain women the option of a separate space. Berg and
Gilbert had both suggested this option, preferring also a separate "smoking room" for men,
which here would have taken place in the general waiting room.
Richardson was commissioned to build the depot so that immigrant arrivals would
be accommodated appropriately, along with the mill owners and railroad executives who
used the trains for business and commuting. As director of the Connecticut River Railroad,
James Rumrill could attest to the problems of the earlier, unsegregated station, packed full
of foreigners. With a design segregating the immigrants into a very small area,
businessmen would no longer need to come in close contact with laborers. Contemporary
observations suggest that the hordes of immigrants arriving at the station every day
comprised the majority of the depot's users. The large general waiting room, expressly for
upper-class businessmen, must have been used a great deal less than the small
' fiPhotograph taken b> M.P Warner Photo, Holyoke, MassachusetLs, 1884. Holyoke Public-
Li brar\.
86
unsegregated immigrant's room, crammed with bodies and baggage.
The station itself was similar to those at South Framingham and Palmer in scale,
having a long rectangular plan, measuring 40 x 140 ft. (RGURE 38) A large general
waiting room (36 x 60 ft), with high ceilings lit from high dormers formed the center of the
plan, with a small bathroom to the side, and a central protruding ticket booth track-side.
On one side of the waiting room was a lobby leading to a telegraph room, and a separate
ladies' room and bathroom. On the other side of the general waiting room, inaccessible
from inside, was the small immigrant's room with men and women's bathrooms, and next
to that a comer baggage room, also only accessible from the outside. In the comer next to
the baggage room was a small stairway leading to an upper level. Doors exited from each
of the ladies, telegraph, general, immigrant, and baggage rooms. A hip and valley roof had
single gable ends on the short sides, and a large central gable flanked by two smaller ones
on the track and carriage sides; eaves projected evenly around the building beneath the
dormers creating a shed surrounding the entire building, supported by wooden posts with
curved bracket tops. The materials consisted of granite random ashlar masonry, sandstone
trim for windows, doors and horizontal bands below the windows on the first level and
above the dormer windows, and a roof of slate. ' 7
Separate rooms for immigrants became common in the late nineteenth-century; at
the Castle Garden immigrant center in New York, immigrants were often segregated by
both sex and race, in order to "maintain discipline," as they were to be sent off in railroad
cars to the West.'^ Immigrants rooms were often designated as "second-class," as at
Spokane, Washington.''-*
^"^See Ochsner, Complete Works, p. 323.
1 ^MacKenzie and Rjchards, p. 148.
'^MacKenzie and Richards, p. 148.
87
Segregating waiting room by sex reflected the Victorian sensibility to protect
women, with the provision of separate waiting facilities for women being almost universal.
In larger stations, women's rooms might have a 'matron' available to help women and
children fatigued by their journeys. 20 The status of smaller stations was in part determined
as to whether there was a separate waiting-room for women. Class-niceties were well
known to travellers, even when not recognized by signposts. Lower-class women were
expected to wait in the general waiting-room, while "ladies," who were middle and upper-
class, had a separate room. 2 '
The provision of a separate room for immigrants effectively separated both social
classes and racial groups. Racial discrimination was apparent in all stations in the South
with Blacks having entirely separate rooms most often directly accessible from street and
tracks to avoid racial mixing; comparable segregation is seen in the "immigrants' room" in
the Holyoke station as well. 22 Another feature common to southern station design found at
Holyoke was differing sanitary arrangements; while most men and women's waiting rooms
had separate bathrooms, this was not the case for Black Americans.
A plan of the station and sketch was published in The Sanitary Engineer in
September, 1886, and reprinted in the Railroad Gazette the next month, and the same
sketch and plan was again printed in Walter Berg's book. (FIGURE 39) Commentary in
the Railroad Gazette and Berg's book was only descriptive. While Berg offered no praise,
he also offered no criticism, implying some degree of approval of the station design. The
plan conceded with Berg's general recommendations for station design.
20MacKcn/.ie and Richards, p. 158.
2 iMacKenzie and Richards, p. 158.
22MacKeniicand Richards, p. 146.
88
STATUS OFTHF CONNFCTICUT RIVER RAILROAD STATION
Today home to an auto-parts shop, the station at Holyoke is in fair condition,
despite an addition and alteration to the south elevation having had some windows replaced
and others filled with cement blocks. (FIGURES 40 - 43) An employee of the shop
informed me that the owner is aware of the building's history, is careful to make no
irreversible changes, and that when change has been needed, it has been worked around the
original components of the building. The area around the station is now desolate, as is
Holyoke in general, with many vacant industrial buildings. If anything, the presence of
this business is probably ensuring the building is not demolished. The trains no longer
stop there.
89
PALMER
The village of Palmer was a rather typical example of a railroad village that, having
been established prior to the railroad, profited as a cross-roads to the west. Contemporary
accounts of the town in the 1880s contain a tone of self-promotion, noting " U may safely
be said that few towns in the commonwealth, or in New England, have been more blessed
with natural advantages, or are better situated to keep in touch with the outside world."23
Palmer is located in Hampden County at the southern section of mid-
Massachusetts. (FIGURE 44) The village was founded in 1716, but remained small,
reaching only 4,012 inhabitants by 1855.24 By then the village counted 6 churches, 13
school houses, 6 taverns, 3 grist mills 17 grocery and dry goods stores, and 4 cotton mills;
505 men were employed at the cotton mills, and 541 women.^^ Other manufacturing
included a scythe factory, two saddle and harness factories, in addition to hat, soap,
carriage, tin ware and boot factories. The straw hat and bonnet factory employed 15 males
and 262 females.26
The strongest initiator of industry in Palmer was the construction of the Boston &
Albany Railroad, which opened from Worcester to the Connecticut River in October of
1839.27 The railroads eased the previously hard and costly transportation of raw materials
and manufactured goods to Springfield and Boston. The railroad gave a new start to
business and social life, creating a "Depot Village." The original depot buildings '"were
small and cheap affairs," with a freight house "equally small and inconvenient". 28 As
^^ Pictorial Pahner {Palmer, Massachusetts: Carpenter and Cad\ Publishers, 1896) 1.
2-^TempIe, History of the Town of Palmer. Massachusetts (Ma.ssachusctLs: 1889) 257.
25Temple, p. 257.
26Temple, p. 258.
27Temple, p. 259.
2^emple, p. 259.
90
traffic rose, the tracks were doubled, the freight yard enlarged, an overhead bridge built,
and a new "commodious and elegant passenger station" erected to replace the old.2'> Other
railroads, including the New London Northern Railroad, the Ware River Railroad, and the
Boston and Maine, reached the town as well, and by the last quarter of the 19th century
there five rail lines ran through the town. As a result, goods were shipped through Palmer
to Boston, New York, Vermont, and the West.
In 1 886 Pictorial Palmer was published, a book of pictures and brief text about the
town. Visitors presumably provided the audience, for much mention is made of Palmer's
position as a stopping point for those traveling for business or leisure.
The commercial traveler is always present, and is so well known that the
effect of his arrival need not be described. Another class, however, are
those who travel for health, pleasure or necessity, and of these the town
sees many. Sometimes they are detained because some obscure destination
makes a long wait necessary. Many, however, make Palmer a stopping
place for rest and relaxation.. ..All these causes combine to give Palmer a
daily number of visitors which is probably greater than is realized by the
average citizen. The well-known propensity of the average American for
doing business of some kind, wherever he may be, is not without its effect.
Every merchant realizes that he is somewhat benefitted in this way, and a
distinct effort to cater to this portion of the public is noticeable in every store
in town.JO
One could imagine PictorialPaliner for sale at the depot, to weary travelers awaiting their
next connection. Two years before Palmer with Pen and Camera had been published in the
same manner. A "Bird's Eye View" photo from the book shows the town at the
time.(FIGURE 45) By this time Palmer could boast of its utilities.
Palmer has, of course, electric lights.. ..All their streets are lighted by this
means, as are the highways running between. ...The company's plant at
Blanchardville is an extensive one, and capable of furnishing far greater
power than its present business requires. ..Water is the principal power used
by the company, although steam has been added as an auxiliary. This
makes it possible for the company to furnish almost unlimited power if
29Temple, p. 259.
^^ Pictorial Palmer, p. 5.
desired.^'
Palmer at the tum of the century was little more than a stopping-point with enough
industry to sustain itself, a small settled area in the middle of a largely rural county, made
up of a rather homogeneous population.
UNION PASSENGER STATION
In the Depot village a handsome union station has been erected, while the
depot park is a spot to which every citizen points with pride. No private
grounds in Palmer are better kept neat.-^2
The Boston & Albany Union Passenger Station served the New London Northern
as well as the B & A. Richardson received the job in August, 1881 ; it was his second
station commissions^. The building was constructed by W.N. Flynt Company, and was
not completed until May 1883, opening to the public in June 1884, at a cost of $ 53,616.
The landscaping was done by Olmsted.-'^-^
The station and grounds at Palmer were clearly a source of pride for the residents,
whose livelihoods to some degree were dependent on the tourists and business men.
Charles Eddy in Palmer Illustrated with Pen and Camera, wrote of the station that "It is
without doubt the finest and most convenient depot in this part of the country, and one of
which all should be proud. "^■'' As a stop along-the-way, the Boston & Albany must have
had a large amount of traffic in order to commission the station and grounds from
Richardson whose work replaced a previous one. The majority of Palmer's residents
^ ^ Pictorial Pahner , p. 5.
^^Piclorial Paltrier, p. 2.
-^30chsner, Complete Works, p. 262.
3-+See Ochsner, Complete Works , p. 262.
•^^charles W. Edd\ , Palmer Illustrated with Pen and Camera (Ware, Mass: 1884) unpaged.
92
probably rarely used the trains. In such a village, aside from serving visitors and travelers,
the train served equally for the transport and receipt of goods. Palmer itself, while
unexceptional, was a rural and attractive stopping point on the scenic route through
Massachusetts to the west. Richardson probably hoped his station's design might evoke
sentiments of rusticity and picturesque charm from sophisticated travellers.
The station at Palmer, along with those at South Framingham and Holyoke,
received virtually no attention in articles about Richardson's stations. This was due in part
to its location in Western Massachusetts and the town's undistinguished status compared to
Newton, Wellesley, or North Easton. At the same time. Palmer was remarkable for its
size, with probably the largest landscaped grounds of any of the stations.
An atlas for 1894 showed a densely settled Palmer.^f' (HGURES 46 - 48) The
large grounds of the station were marked on the atlas as "R.R. Park", with a church next to
the grounds. Moderate sized plots with houses radiated north, northeast and southeast of
the station, while to the west lay the Quaboag River, not far from the station were a
construction yard, a foundry, and a woolen mill, while the Rogers Osgood Hat Company
stood opposite the station. The center of the town was known as "Depot Village". ''^ A
photograph from Pictorial Palmer, titled "Park and Grotto at the Union Passenger Station"
is a rare image of the "Railroad Park," comprised of the landscaped grounds of the station.
The photograph (FIGURE 49) showed a large green lawn, surrounded with plantings next
to the church, and a pathway with what apf>ear to be two round benches. Each bench
contained central wooden post brackets, supporting a round roof covering similar to the
station in form, and designed specifically for the park.
The design (FIGURES 50 & 51 ) filled a trapezoidal area at the junction of two
^^Topographical Atlas, County of Hampden, Massachusetts (Palmer and Holyoke. Sprmglield
Mass.: L.J. Richards & Co, 1894). PaJmer Pubhc Librarv.
^"^ Pictorial Pahner , p. 1.
93
crossing tracks, and was one of the largest stations along with those at South Framingham
and Holyoke. Platforms extended beyond the building on both long track sides,
surrounding the whole building. Entrances were on the wide end of the building. The
interior had a large central two-story general waiting room, a dining room, smoking room,
baggage room, kitchen, pantry, two agents rooms, ticket office, bathrooms and a telegraph
office. The materials were Monson granite, with brown Longmeadow Sandstone for trim
on doors and windows.^^ A wide hipped roof extended to become porches along the
platforms, surrounding the building on all sides. High windowed dormers provided light
for the interior, which was wainscotted in brick and wood. (RGURE 52) Arched
openings created divisions in the waiting room space. A separate structure was built about
35 feet east of the main structure for the B & A baggage.
Palmer with Pen and Camera devoted a page to the "Union Passenger Station,"
accompanied by a photograph. (RGURE 51) The main waiting room was described as a
"light, roomy, and comfortable place," forty by fifty feet in size, with light from the
windows overhead. The Western Union Telegraph office occupied a glass room in the
waiting room, "on the Boston and Albany side," opposite the "elegant drinking fountain of
Tennessee marble" on the south side of the room. The interior decoration was described as
being of "elegance and durability".39
Walter Berg briefly discussed the station at Palmer. While he offered no criticism,
he probably disapproved the lack of a separate woman's room in the design of such a large
station. Otherwise, the station generously accommodated the requirements for a station of
that size.
^^Pictorinl Palmer, p. 1.
39The quotes in this paragraph were taken from Edd) , page entitled "Union Passenger Station."
94
STATUS OFTHF UNION PASSENGER STATION
The station at Palmer is in a precarious state, but in the process of
change.( FIGURES 53 - 57) At the time of my visit, the station was home to a deserted flea
market, but I was informed that new owners were opening a restaurant there. The exterior
of the building was undergoing repair, as well. Unfortunately, work was beginning in the
interior which appeared to be the start of the removal of interior features, specifically the
ticket office. The town itself appeared somewhat depressed, so that the building's status is
probably not a pressing issue. While the station undoubtedly will be compromised in its
new uses, its future will be more secure than if vacant. The large grounds are now a
parking lot.
95
SOUTH FRAMINGHAM
South Framingham by the 1880s was an active village, approaching the character of
a town. Contemporary newspaper articles reflected self-promotion as seen in nearby
suburbs, and an ambition in wanting to be recognized as a distinguished community and
developing suburb, with resident Boston businessmen. It was actually home to a
population that varied from prosperous elite commuters to laborers, immigrants, and
prisoners.
Framingham itself grew out of three villages— South Framingham, Framingham
Center, and Saxonville.-^" Framingham lay a few towns west of the western suburbs of
Boston, separated from Wellesley by Natick. (FIGURE 58) It was the advent of the
railroad that changed the character of Framingham, giving great impetus to the economic
life of the South Village and shifting focus away from the center of the town. Charters
were granted in 1830 to the Boston and Providence, and the Boston and Lowell lines. The
Boston and Worcester Railroad was incorporated in 183 1; eventually become part of the B
& A. South Framingham was the mid-way point of the Boston to Worcester road, and
immediately establisheditself as an important stopping place. Early industry included straw
manufacturing begun at the turn of the 19th century, and bonnet manufacturing established
in 1813.-H With the arrival of the railroad a long list of industries soon joined the straw
manufacturers, predominantly rubber companies.
The first depot in South Framingham was a small frame Gothic Revival structure.
In the following fifty years industry increased in the area around it, commercial buildings
were built, and for travelers, hotels. In the second half of the century, the area became a
■^OAs Ihe Boston and Worcester Turnpike was de\ eloped the beginning of the nineleenlh ceniur^,
the fate of Framingham was unsure, but the road was completed in 1809. Designed to join Roxburv and
Worcester, and crossing through Framingham Center, the place quickly became a horse-changing stop. At
this Ume South Framingham was undistinguished, w ith only a handful of houses and a blacksmith's shop.
-Hjames F.O'Gorman, &d\\ov, Around the Slalion: The Town and the Train (Framingham, Mass:
Danforth Museum Exhibition Catalog, 1978) 6.
96
commercial and retail center, with the construction of more hotels and business blocks.
With the merger in 1867 of the Boston and Worcester Railroad and the Western Railroad
forming the Boston and Albany, it became possible to take the train to Albany, and on to
Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, St. Louis, Detroit or Chicago. As at other B & A stops,
four of these trains with parlor cars, coaches, and sleeping cars, ran through the town
daily.-^2 There were local trains to Worcester, Lowell, New Bedford, Fall River, and many
other industrial sites in the area, and by 1888, according to the Framin^ham Tribune,
"South Framingham has a hundred passenger trains stop at its station every day, coming
from north, south, east and west, and fifty different mails arrive and depart."-+3
By 1880 the population of Framingham was 6,235.-^-* An article in the
FraminghamTrihune from July 20, 1888, "The Building Boom: South Framingham Still
Growing", described recent progress in the area's development, calling South Framingham
"the Hub, Jr.".-*-'^ Framingham was just within an area considered close enough for a
reasonable commute to Boston. South Framingham, or the south village, was described as
the youngest and most important of the three villages of Framingham, the village itself
composed of a number of villages or neighborhoods, "it having in a certain sense, suburbs,
like a city." The three neighborhoods were Lokerville in the north, with about a hundred
families, Cobumville to the west, and to the east the "rapidly growing" Sherbom, owing its
growth to the Para Rubber Shoe Company nearby, with a large number of houses being
built there in recent times, "well planned and. ..comfortable little homes for those who buy
them".
■^2o'Gomian, p. 8.
-*3'The Building Bcxim,'T/j? Framingliam Tribune 20 July 1888.
•^"^Oiilline Map of I lie Conunonweahh of Massachusetts with populations in IHHO (Rand A\cr\
& Company, 1882). Harvard University.
■^^Tlie Fraininglmin Tribune 20 July 1888.
97
The article described a new store being built in Lokerville by Mr. Butland, of
whose own new residence of ten rooms nearby would be finished in a few days, "heated
by steam, [withj hot and cold water, and all the modem improvements." The article also
described recent building in the area, such as the new house of Henry T. Fales on Beach
Street, with "eight rooms. ..heated by the hot water system, and though not a large nor very
expensive house, is one of the most attractive in the village from an architectural
standpoint." The article mentioned the recent installation of "a fine system of sewerage",
while the "main streets of all three villages in town are lighted by electricity, as well as
many of the factories, public halls and buildings". By this time the Framingham Union
Street Railway Company had been established, thus giving "the streets a citified air."-**^
Photographs from South Framingham Illustrated, Fourteen Views, showed
moderately-sized houses amidst large lots of land, with one view with the women's prison
(see below) partly hidden in the background. Certain areas were more densely settled than
others.-^7 Jhe book was part of a genre of books written on suburbs and rural towns and
villages, with focused on self-promotion. While in part these were probably efforts at
enticing remaining city-dwellers to move to the suburbs, they also served the purpose of a
reminder to the residents of their own perceived privileged status.
THE SOUTH FRAMINGHAM STATION
The South Framingham Station commission was the fourth station Richardson
designed for the B & A, and the fifth station built. Of all his stations for the line, this was
one of the largest, similar in size to the stations at Palmer and Holyoke, and one of the most
active. The commission was awarded in October, 1883, but according to local newspaper
■^^The quotes in the two preceding paragraphs were taken from an article about South Framingham
that appeared in Tlie Framingham Tribune 20 Jul\ 1888.
•♦^Undated, this wa.s probably published in the 188()s.
98
accounts the design was not agreed to until February 1884.-t*< Norcross Brothers were
responsible for construction in 1885. Costs, including furnishings, totaled $ 62,7 18.-*'-'
South Framingham seems to have had suburban aspirations; and the presence of
numerous factories and manufacturers— and at least one prison—suggested that it was
actually otherwise. Its early establishment as a railroad junction brought a substantial
amount of commerce to the area. The station itself served a mix of commuters to Boston,
and travellers to and from the west. Perhaps the pressure of South Framingham's more
prosperous and influential citizens led the B & A to choose it as a location for one of
Richardson's stations, combined with its importance as a junction. Richardson would not
be the only prestigious architect to design for the town, Peabody and Steams designing a
building close to the station in ISQV.-'^o Richardson's station at South Framingham, like
that at Holyoke, probably did not receive much attention since it was not in a picturesque
and purely residential area, like those along the Newton Circuit.
Following the station's construction. South Framingham was proposed as the
location for the Middlesex County jail because of ample railroad facilities. It was already
located close to another prison, the women's reformatory institution at Sherbom, built in
1874. The decision of where to place the prison had been a precarious one; no one in the
eastern part of the state wanted it, and it was suggested that it be placed in Western
Massachusetts, which was for the most part undeveloped. When statistics found that two-
thirds or more of the criminals came from Boston, Lowell, and Lawrence— the latter two of
the largest mill towns in the state— the board was convinced that a location in the east was
essential. They decided this because;
^8van Rensselaer ga\e the commission date as October, 1883.
-t^Ochsncr, p. 320.
50 O'Gorman, pp. 10-11.
99
...at South Franiingham were excellent railroad facilities, it being in direct
communication with every portion of the state. Ail the large cities, too, are
situated upon lines which run through this village, and not only is South
Framingham a railroad centre but it is centrally located between those
districts which furnish the larger portion of criminals....lt was desirable, of
course, that the institution should be somewhat secluded, and yet at the
same time, within a reasonable distance of the railroad station. ">'
Its location was about three-quarters of a mile from South Framingham. The prison, the
first of its kind, gave women training as domestic servants; it was managed and directed
entirely by women, having a total of 225 inmates in 1887.^2 it is interesting to note that
while the station clearly received arriving convicts, this use was not reflected in the station
plan.
The area around the station at South Framingham was commercial. An atlas for
1895 showed large commercial buildings located nearthe station and moderately settled
areas beyond with medium sized lots and houses.(FIGURES 59 &. 60) This was probably
the reason that extensive landscaping was not done here although there was some
landscaping done, perhaps by Olmsted. Charles Robinson's article "Suburban Station
Grounds" for House & Garden in 1904 briefly discussed the landscaping, mentioning that
ground for planting was restricted since the station was situated at a busy junction, and that
"there is a very good building and wherever there does appear a comer that can be planted
the opportunity is availed of."53
The article included a drawn plan of the position of the station and grounds.
(FIGURE 61 ) Plantings of unspecified type served to hide areas of tracks, and the smaller
storage facilities to the northwest of the station. Plantings also created islands between
carriage path-ways entering and exiting the station to its east and west.
^'"A Model Prison "The Framingliam Tribune 13 July 1888.
52"A Mcxiel Pnson,"The Framingliam Tribune 13 July 1888.
53Robinson, "Suburban Station Grounds," p. 186.
100
The station's design, like those already built at Aubumdale, Chestnut Hill, and
North Eiaston, was rectangular, measuring 40 x 120 feet. (FIGURE 62) The plan was
divided in the center by a large general waiting room (33 x 60 ft) with high ceilings, and a
ticket booth protruding along the track side. On the east side of the waiting room was an
adjoining dining room and next to that, a serving room, smoking room and men's
bathroom. On the west end of the waiting room was a ladies' room and bathroom, and
small telegraph and agent offices. In the rooms to the east and west of the waiting rooms
were stairs leading to a second level. The second level contained a kitchen and offices.
The central waiting room was one large open space, two stories high, supported by a single
column with exposed wooden trusses running along the diagonals of the room. (FIGURE
63) Broad rectangular windows were placed symmetrically around the building. The
waiting room was wainscotted with brick, and sheathed in vertical oak boards, with an
open-timbered ceiling. A monumental stone and brick fireplace was opposite the ticket
booth.>-t (FIGURE 64)
The station was built of Braggville granite, arranged in random ashlar fashion, with
Longmeadow red sandstone trim, set in red mortar, and a roof of slate. The cross gabled/
hipped roof housed three triangular dormers on each of the two long elevations above deep
overhangs; two smaller flanking dormers had smaller squat, Palladian windows for the
second level rooms, and one central dormer with a large semi-circular arch with windows,
which allowed light into the waiting room. Carved stone lion heads marked the ends of the
central dormers, and the eastern slope of the hip contained a small eyebrow dormer. The
roof extended beyond the building, as in other stations, to create a long horizontal eave and
a platform shed supported by wooden piers, with curved brackets and a protective roof
roadside. Another free-standing platform shed was built across the tracks on the north
^■^The Framingluun Gajetre 11 Januarj 1884.
lOl
side. Porte cocheres were located on the north-east and north-west comers.-''^
The station at South Framingham received high praise from Walter Berg in his
Buildings ami Structures of American Railroads. He wrote that "the arrangement of the
ground-plan can be considered as first-class for the purposes to be accomplished;" the only
other station by Richardson to be judged so highly by Berg was The Old Colony Station at
North ELaston."*'^ The South Framingham Station followed many of Berg and Gilbert's
suggestions for good station design including the placement of a bay ticket booth, a
separate ladies room, dining facilities, a separate smoking room for men, a telegram office
accessible to ticket booth, and a large fireplace in the center of the waiting room. It is
interesting to note that while this station was regarded highly by Berg, it rarely received
mention in articles about Richardson's stations.
STATUS OF THE SOLfTH FRAMINGHAM STATION
South Framingham "s station is now a restaurant and active commuter stop.
(FIGURES 65 - 68)The area around the station is a busy and dense commercial center.
Great changes were made in the interior to accommodate its new function with awnings
placed above the windows on the exterior, along with signs and banners. Despite the
alterations, the building appears well maintained.
55See Ochsner, Complete Works, p. 320.
-^6Berg. p. 325.
102
chapter six:
prp:servation and conclusions
103
CHAPTER SIX: PRESERVATION AND CONCLUSIONS
The relationship between Richardson's stations and their respective settings was
made clear through station presentation and plan. First, the presence or absence of
landscaping indicated that certain locations were valued more than others because of their
different character. In the suburban stations, such as Newton, Brighton, and Wellesley
Hills, landscaping took precedence and was part of the station program. Villages like
Palmer and North Easton were attentively landscaped. In these settings, landscaping
created an attractive environment, acted as a buffer between train and town, blended the
stations with their locations, and advertised the railroad's concern for appearances and
customers.
Yet in the remaining locations like Holyoke, and South Framingham, landscaping
was minimal to non-existent. This devalued the stations and suggested that as industry and
commerce surrounded these stations, rather than using plantings to hide the trains, they
were part of the urban landscape. Perhaps a lack of landscaping also suggested diminished
concern for appearances and customer satisfaction.
Plans fit the location of the station. For the relatively small commuter stations in the
suburbs, plans were kept to a minimum, with one or two waiting rooms for men and
women, bathrooms, and ticket, telegraph, and baggage rooms. This was the case for those
stations in Newton, Brighton, Wellesley Hills, and North Easton. These stations served a
homogeneous commuter clientele made up of people who used the station for only a short
time in the morning (stations usually being on the in-bound side of the tracks) and in the
evenings, when was no interest in using the stations.
At junctions like Palmer and South Framingham the stations were meant to serve
those people who were waiting for connections for some time, on longer journeys. Dining
facilities and large, comfortable waiting rooms were created to accommodate them. These
104
stations served a more representative body of the population at large. While a ladies'
waiting room was provided for women at South Framingham who were probably traveling
to Boston, one was not provided at Palmer, leading one to conclude that such class-niceties
were not considered as necessary there; and in-fact, class-divisions are less apparent there.'
These stations also saw a good deal of commercial activity, and were large for that reason
as well.
Holyoke's station was centered in industry, and rather than serving as a cross-
roads it was intended to accommodate, separately, immigrants and businessmen. A
majority of these businessmen, mill owners and railroad magnates probably lived closer
Boston, traveling to Holyoke as needed. The plan of this station, more than any other,
shows the clear class distinctions of the time.
The stations were also emblematic. Their designs and landscapes were meant to be
representations of prosperity, sophistication, and progressiveness. Certainly the corporate
commissioners intended that they be associated with these aims. The stations reflected,
both intentionally and unintentionally, the communities in which they were located. Where
in Wellesley Hills or Newton this meant refined and picturesque communities, in Holyoke
it meant blatant class divisions. The railroads hoped to please customers (and board
members,) to advertise the railroads, and to keep classes of riders properly placed.
Richardson and Olmsted offered artistic and creative solutions to the railroads'
needs, managing in suburban locations to present the stations as belonging in their
attractive natural settings, avoiding any appearance of disruption. The landscaping was
both an attractive distraction and a tool for hiding the very railroad that the stations
serviced. The combined efforts of Richardson and Olmsted created a natural, geologic
image of architecture in its setting. In all locations, the attractive stone stations added an air
or respect and permanence and the larger stations created grand entrances for the towns.
iTown atlases show the village as basically one dense arrangement of mixed use.
105
Contemporary criticism of Richardson's stations generally centered on whether his
designs compromised functional efficiency for aesthetics. This is not exclusive to his
station designs, as librarians were quick to criticize his library designs for the same
reasons. Nor is this unusual for architects in general. According to critics his stations at
North E^ston and South Framingham appeared to be his most functionally successful ones.
But his lack of sensibility in design function did not seem to be of much consequence.
Despite grounds for criticism, few were made on the whole . People were more concerned
with appearances. Richardson's achievement in aesthetic terms meant the most to both
client and user.
PRESERVATION
The Railroad remained well-utilized up until the beginning of the twentieth-century,
as the automobile became more affordable and accessible to the public at large, and became
the transportation mode of choice. Cars began as commuting vehicles in the 1930s, but did
not take hold as an exclusive form for commuting until the 1950s with the establishment of
highways and interstates. Railroad companies began to see declines in ridership, and then
revenue. While commuter travel still remained strong the first half of the century,
excursion and vacation traveling was sharply reduced. Automobiles offered convenience,
and the ability to travel free of scheduled arrivals and departures, and the railroad
companies had a difficult time convincing people otherwise.
By the end of World War II, railroads had decided that freight was easier than
passengers, and once this was coupled with federal money for roads in the 1950s, the era
of passenger service saw its end. While there was still a steady commuter patronage, there
was no longer the possibility of increasing ridership. As a result, many train lines and
stations were being abandoned, and former station gardens replaced with the ubiquitous
parking lot.
106
Of the eleven stations discussed, five were demolished, and six remain (Wellesley
Hills, Woodland in Newton, North IBaston, Holyoke, Palmer and South Framingham.) All
of the stations had to their advantage their stone material, which while more expensive
initially, required less maintenance, and was more difficult and expensive to demolish than
wood or brick buildings. It is interesting that the three largest stations survived, it is hard
to believe that this has not been a factor.
The stations that remain are valuable cultural landmarks, representing an important
time for the railroads and communities. While maintaining the physical stature of the
buildings is extremely important, preservation of their contextual history is another issue.
At their best, the stations and their settings were carefully cared for, proud symbols of
railroad and town, and billboards for them. While it is not really difficult to find alternate
uses for them, it is harder to find uses that are more appropriate to their historical context.
The best uses would refiect the community in a positive way, reflecting and promoting it
like a billboard. Ideally these train stations could be reused again for the same purpose,
perhaps with small newsstands and coffee shops inside. Real-estate offices are good
examples of alternate uses that have been tried in the Philadelphia area. They clearly have
an interest in town presentation and promotion, and would create impressive offices for
p>otential home buyers in a restored Richardson station. There would also be the
opportunity for restoring the landscaping as well. Banks follow as an appropriate alternate
use, for the same reasons and associations with the community, and would also provide the
chance to restore the landscaping.
Commuter rail certainly has its appeal in these times, with the hassles and expenses
of driving; the railroads could work to promote more rail travel in conjunction with a
rehabilitation of the stations, improving the frequency and quality of train service, which
around Boston currently remains high. Railroad transport has seen growth as the end of
the century nears, and perhaps the stations could see a new life from this.
107
A frequently seen adapted re-use has been conversion of stations into restaurants.
This has been done successfully at the South Framingham station, and while the interiors
have been greatly compromised, it has kept the station there and maintained. The station is
surrounded by a parking lot serving both the active commuter stop, and restaurant, situated
in a busy part of town. One of the small accompanying buildings for the station has been
converted to a coffee shop, which is an excellent use for such a sized building.
Apparently the station at Palmer was purchased last winter by someone with plans
to convert it into a restaurant as well, and while the station's interiors were still intact before
this, the station was very run down, so that the change, if successful, could ensure the
future of the station place in the currently depressed town. As a restaurant, a large part of
the old grounds, now paved, will serve as a parking lot, but there could be interest in
restoring some of the landscaped grounds, perhaps as a joint effort of town and restaurant,
to create a small park.
The station at Holyoke, considering the surrounding area, is fortunate to have use
as an auto-parts business, with a relatively sympathetic owner, aware of the building's
history. With the current conditions of the neighboring area comprised of deserted
industrial buildings, there would not be much initiative for introducing other uses at such a
site. Could the area be revitalized, the building could serve as an excellent place for a
museum of industry and immigration for the area, and the city of Holyoke would be a great
location for this.
The station at Wellesley Hills, while small, houses three small businesses (coffee
shop, clock shop and dry cleaners) and remains a commuter stop, located in a busy and
densely developed part of town, the station sits on presumably very valuable land which
could put it in jeopardy in the future. While well maintained, the station has long been
compromised and taken on new features unrelated to the original design. A restoration
would be very expensive, but under one owner, the station could serve as many uses: as a
108
retail store (bookstore), restaurant, offices, or a museum, bank or real estate office.
Attempts at restoring the landscaping would be awkward and impossible at such a
crowded, and developed commercial location.
The station at Woodland apparently houses supplies for a country club that owns
the surrounding area. Under the same owners the station could serve nicely as an attractive
bar, small restaurant, or snack house, serving a similar clientele in the same spirit. Or it
could serve the same purpose for the town at large, with the restored landscape acting as a
surrounding park.
The station at North Easton is perhaps the luckiest and serves the most ideal
function, for the town historical society. The station is on the National Register. It is well
maintained and the grounds are landscaped in the summer. It is a unique situation
considering the town's history and all of Richardson's commissions there.
Smaller stations offer excellent opportunities for many businesses that have been
mentioned, and could also be used by banks for ATM machines, which would provide
along with functional purpose, distinguished character.
The stations should be nominated for National Register status as a multiple property
group. This would enable them to qualify for funding to be rehabilitated, and give them the
acknowledgement that they should be recognized for. From there a program could be
established for a more sensitive approach to using the buildings. Plaques should be erected
at the sites, and reproductions of photos of the buildings and their settings should be
displayed with them.
Caring for and maintaining the stations is important for both architectural and town
histories, and should be promoted as such. The stations were reflective of the town's
socio-economic and cultural character in the late I9th century, and should be kept as
reminders of that history. It is a history of value on both local and national levels, which
needs to preserved through these buildings.
109
ILLUSTRATIONS
110
Componeo+ Parti o-f the Boston and Albany Syatem
"•■ Beaton and Worcester Prtt3fr«ld and North Adams
^^ Western Ra'lrosd Spr'ingi't\<i and North Eastarn
^— Albany and Wes+ Stockbrldga Ware Hrvtr
•••• Hudson and ■Berkshire flsrfcultural branch
•M-M Provldanctt, Webster and Spl^m^field er«nd US'
FIGURE 1: "Component Parts of the Boston and Albany System.
FIGURE 2: Title page from King's Handbook of Newton.
FIGURE 3:Map of Newton and surrounding towns
NEWTON
i HUeWOCK OF IIWTM.
^ .„,„^ ^A- . /^fi.■,„-^^/;^^,■••^-^, ..OVJ' >^A 7 \
^./*» -,'x-*^-..ri-n«/--'',-^
/.
.1
1=
i-
REFERENCES.
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>• if'fA,*f.-.r V"- t*-rrA
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;/ MW' .**.«/
FIGURE 4: Map of Newton.
112
-'"■'^"5**«f«i«,
'■^'-'V^^-
FIGURE 5: Atlas showing Auburndale Station.
/\UBURNDA1-E_ - .
Ground Plans of Station Buildings.
FIGURE 6: Plan for Auburndale Station.
13
tely compound leaves. Iikr a Horse chestnut or *'**"" **^** looked like ua^^nied Kioan, mm
t li Afured In the *■ A-mwi Ptsmi^rmm." t, 1 740. and wooden boxes which mervly diapUjrvd the raOi
>ubt on« of tlie most striking novelties from the pany's desire to expend as little monej ss pot
PUxi of Aabomdalc Sutlon GrT>iind«, Ek»too It Albany R&Uroao.
ct of Hupeh, though the flowers are not ver>- no rural stations that gave pleasure to the p
i^^^*!""* **^ ^^*^ J!°L'*i![^'i°11 ^ U""f ^^^ ^y^' accommodated him comfortably
FIGURE 7: Plan for Auburndale Station Grounds.
The tn:ttn<.t in |hi» itation it ihtuujK a Tinc-rijd porie cochfre
A Study in Railroad Gardening
The Successful Combination of the Practical and Pic-
rurotjtir and hs \'iUic lu the Suhurhan C"nmmunitv
FIGURE 8: Photo of Auburndale Station.
14
^ I T^ /''f i'*
> /*■
HGURE 9: Atlas showing Chestnut Hill Station.
- - • -™^w, tvaicf-tuuiii^, iiiiu a, pone iiviirrf.
raw*/w «/ «*»/»»/ Hi/I, Mat,. Bc<l«n ir Alhi,,, Kailroad~-\\,t fl,ic-de|y)l al Cl.tMnu! Hil
., on Ihc Biookljrnc biancb o( llic Buslon 4: Albany Railroad, shown in f.g,. 508 and 5c-
flB. fO^— €MVll»fUli
Md by the luc Vr. H. H. »icb«njKm, irchitett, BiooklyBC. MaH.. plans (or -Mcli «re J>»»
I te Ihc KmUrtd GttUt of Nor. 5. 1M6; in Ihc StiuUry £Mlimtir, Vol. 14: ««<1 l« Ike Amerxm
^utt^ BmOdug Nimi of Feb. it, 1M7, i> a toLin. mB^-aari. gramtc txiikluit •«* •"""
^ ud roof o< ml dla. TV |»ud|»l awl BOA MriUsi Icsurc <i< Ihc iksga ■ > lot
FIGURE 10: Plan and perspective of Chestnut Hill Station.
115
iHKSTNfT mil STATION i.N IHI: BOSTON A AI.HANY RAILROAD.
H. 11. Ri.hafdMR. AfchiiVLi
THEEVOLVTIONOF THE
SVBVKBAN STATION
BY I H PHILLIPS
FIGURE 11: Photo of Chestnut Hill Station.
Uiiw<*^>i'- '" ■ *urpnwngiT «fton »pacc o: titnc. i*c
ufhf to ma.'kr; :»wmlr the datiper <»f 6rf w:il in^rcAsv
Hoportioii hs Oft-y mrr huilt Ktrr* wtll *r»rf4'l f.-i>tn :hc
road IiKaiir-nr fa- into thr forc^' *;..; as Ihr rPflon bp-
9C» fnorr accc^^Utc. t.'ir r.i:i^>«T ol hrc* trl bjr kunlcrk.
ipen and lof-cuttcm wii; i.c^i.v»nlT incremBC
purpoar. b-^: carciuuf |>roupea to as to :
ID unity. intrTT»L r^acc and harmonr.
The extrrmt siir and »(tltdity of the archai which f
the purcti oi the Matton ha\ e Ueen criticucd aa laappfQ
•M in •<> emaU a buDdlog Bui we may recall whal
lalelr- aaid of Aubomdalr—* sution is eaaantiall'
oTATiON QrOUNDS
8C A Rft
"■"j i^^^^^^^^^'S^^^r^^c^'
— Boaton and A1b«ni
s creation of railroad lines o% er private property can- shelter, not a dwelling-place, and its roof is therefore
e prevented, but the state i*. able to protect its own more importance in pivinp it the right expression Ih
rtv and ii IS noi witM r.i m;.;r.tn,n an o.lminietraiinn walU Thesc archcs suslainiop oulv a Toof. Would i
FIGURE 12: Plan for station grounds at Chestnut Hill.
116
trr's uitra^ arc cxpanMvc.
Iff than it' hr w.r'-r m t,>\\
It uarilt-n
tiiul tt : huf
n this in-
)M-Mt v|tan'
mt t'iiMiii;h
hiin. (.t.n-
.-r h'<w :fir
jiiii It has a
'Tie-
I t 11 r
spt
is rh"'iiL'h
e\ l.f —
r tnuitil ir
3 11 C I 3 I I \
-th while,
the larircr
rns th'ey ^^AllA^ siatios
U' give t«»
tract a pretty park-suggestive name; and
1 lav (Hit its streets and dc% el(»r them rhar
rewara tncin wkii muc itt«.»it ui«ii « w
In hiipile*--. iumMc of name-sign and por
cochcre, bt
gage truck*
crimson n
bier, pemp
tivc and p
portion woi
hcannihilat
The travel
wtiiild helii
wiser than
rhc\ had .
vuted the
seKcs whc
heartily
sate hel s
umbrella.
For th
reason a (
cussionof h
any partia
mad has developed anv particular station
tt tTpn*"-al inrrr^siT anH vahir onlv in
Boston k aibasv r.r.
FIGURE 13: Photograph of Waban Station.
5(v;E. . Wfs o».H '¥v».^3
FIGURE 14: Photograph of Station Drive at Waban.
117
■EWTON
r HOSPITAL I
FIGURE 15. Atlas showing Woodland Station.
FIGURE 16: Atlas of the City of Boston; Charlestown and Brighton.
18
House and Garden
y be found on the New Vork Ccntral'i
ston and Albany division, the road that
Jbrins that division having been one of the
pioneers in the work — gradually developed
into an art — of beautifying station surround-
ings, having far distanced one of its con-
luttrared in the p
•rticlc ii Wibin. N
pretty park like effir
and how much thii
hanccd by the dam
that comet into the fen
of the picture. Two I
lead put the tntioi
crotio over the t
right anglet, and to
diagonal path lct(
effect far lovelier thi
ground between road
tiun had been cleare
unnecessary little pU
hind the buahet-
bridal wreath, if one
the memory of •
when it wu all abloom, — the carrii
leads into the highway, at the corr
station grounds. An alternative pi
have thrust the planting where the
is, and have led the path beside th
the station. That would have beci
i;^t
lOSTON II ALBANY a.R
FIGURE 17: Photograph of Brighton Station.
FIGURE 18: Photograph of the demolition of Wahan Station.
119
rVx.
WELLE9LEY HILLB
l^^»'
^'
*>r
/
FIGURH 19: Atlas of Wellesley Hills.
i-*'-j.'
FIGURE 20: Detail.
120
FIGURE 21: Photograph of Wellesley Hills Station.
f
UK.it- KiW'.VP.
. > >:: Mh'N "N THt HI'Mt'^ & Vi HAW KAiuKv-Al*.
t: I .ii -t vimI i.iiM- i:rsr.t iii»'ii tin- .li- tlie ^iihstaiuial «.ill- »j local slonr gave
;i,i. :- t lilt- ',i! • jl Ilia; iii-u\ul lit an air ..i ixrrmancnn: and stabilit>
iii.Miit: ilir -!■ ■■> ■ iioiuri. The >iatii>n> crcvleit l>y tlui Nc» Eng-
;in- -la'i .11 ail. v gncn l.i">l railr.i.nl iinilcr !hr s«lilan« nf
RGURE 22: Photograph of Wellesley Hills Station.
121
FIGURE 23: Street (west) elevation, Wellesley Hills Station.
FIGURE 24: South elevation, Welleslev Hills Station.
122
jNofiYJ-j LA-B-fon.
FIGURE 25: Map of the town of North Easton.
0. /tmei tr iovj Cerj'cranon — Jr'.tr. \ianutA.-lorie:
FIGURE 26: Lithograph of Ames Shovel Manufacturers, 1891.
123
FIGURE 27: Plan for Old Colony Railroad Station.
FIGURE 28: Detail of exterior of Old Colony Railroad Station,
track side elevation.
124
FIGURE 29: Old Colony Station,
carriage elevation.
FIGURE 30. Old Colony Stat
ion, track side elevation.
125
FIGURE 3 \ : Oiit^ne Map of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with
F1GUKH32: Atlas of the city of Holyoke.
126
HGURESSrAUas of the cit/of Holyoke
ff r-f ^ %^
FIGURE 34: Atlas of the city of Holvoke.
127
J. i ■'•»■
r ' " I ^•
r^.
5^,.is;S5"S^I
HGURE 35: "Bird's Eye View" of Holyoke.
[holtokeT
• 7i^rf*u.ii.
i
1
1
\
-*..) -
FIGURE 36: Map of Holyoke showing immigrant neighborhoods
128
FIGURE 37: Photo of the Connecticut River Railroad Station.
HoIyoWe, Mass.— Connecticut River Railroad.
HE BOSTON & ALBANY AND THE CONNECTICUT
H. H. RiCHABDSON, Architect.
i: -if
1 r
T ■
1
•
•
•
■ ■
T^
.AN
• l\0l.V0rtC 5TATI3W •
Cor.KXCTievT. I\jvc«. R'R-
FIGURE 38: Connecticut River Railroad Station plan.
129
^J'^
Flo. 59a.— PiMPfcnvK.
FIGURE 39: Connecticut River Railroad Station perspective.
FIGURE 40: Connecticut River Railroad Station, now Auto-Parts shop.
130
FIGURE 41 Connecticut River Railroad Station.
HGURE 42: Connecticut River Railroad Station, cement-block filled
windows.
131
FIGURE 43: Connecticut River Railroad Station, alterations.
FIGURE 44: Outline Map of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with
populations in 1880.
132
FIGURE 45: "Bird's Eye View" photograph of Palmer.
i
X
A, ^i•>
FIGURE 46: Atlas of Palmer.
133
FIGURE 47: Detail
FIGURE 48: Detail.
134
..II. -■ 1 \ I I M \
FIGURE 49: Photograph of Union Passenger Station "Railroad Park."
^„„ — — 7— • f
FIGURE 50: Plan for Union Passenger Station.
135
FIGURE 51: Photograph of Union Passenger Station
FIGURE 52: Photograph of interior of Union Passenger Station.
136
RGURE 53: Union Passenger Station.
.1^^
FIGURE 54: Union Passenger Station.
137
FIGURE 55: Union Passenger Station
HGURE 56 Union Passenger Stati
on.
138
FIGURE 57: Union Passenger Station.
FIGURE 5S: Outline Map of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with
populations in 1880.
139
np^
'•'■■'T>: »
SOUTH rRAitflNOHAM
/-■^-^^
..^'>
\ v^
FIGURE 59: Atlas showing South Framingham.
I'hATK !
FIGURE 60:AtIas showing South Framingham Station.
140
\_ ... .
l']-AS SHOWIN'C,
SO
FIGURE 61: Plan showing grounds of South Framingham Station.
FIGURE 62: Elevation and plan for South Framingham Station.
141
FIGURE 63: Historic American Buildings Survey Photograph of South
Framingham Station interior.
■ I ^ ' -• • .' -^' —
FIGURE 64: Plan for fireplace and mantel in station waiting room, South
Framingham Station.
142
RGURE 65: South Framingham Station, street-side elevation.
FIGURE 66: South Framingham Station.
143
FIGURE 67: South Framingham Station.
RGURE 68: South Framingham Station, secondary buildini
144
BIBLIOGRAPHY
145
BOOKS
Alexander, Edwin P. Down at the Depot. American Railroad Stations from ISM to 1920.
New York: C.N. Potter, distributed by Crown Publishers, 1970.
Andrews, Wayne. Architecture, Amhiti(m and Americans: A Social History of American
Architecture, l^ndon: Collier-Macmillan Limited, 1964.
Baigell, Matthew. A Concise History of American Painting and Sculpture. New York:
Harper & Row, 1984.
Baker, George Pierce. The Formation of the New England Railroad Systems. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1949.
Baltzell, E. Digby. Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia. New York: The Free Press,
1979.
Berg, Walter. Buildings and Structures of American Railroads. New York: John Wiley
and Sons. 1893.
Binford, Henry C. The First Suburbs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
Douglas, George H. All Aboard. New York: Paragon House, 1992.
Eddy, Charles W. Palmer Illustrated with Pen and Camera. Ware, Mass: 1884.
Fabos, Julius T., Gordon T. Milde and V. Michael Weinmayr. Frederick Law Olmsted,
Sr. Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 1968.
Fein, A 1 bert . Frederick Law Olmsted and the American Environmental Tradition. New
York: George Braziller, 1972.
Fisher, Leonard Everett. Tracks Across Atnerica: the Story of the American Railroad,
1825-1900. New York: Holiday House, 1992.
Fishman, Robert. Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia. New York: Basic
Books, Inc., 1987.
Fiske, Hon. Joseph E. History of the Town ofWellesley. Boston: The Pilgrim Press,
1917.
Foner, Eric and John A. Garraty, editors. The Reader's Companion to American History.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1991.
Green, Constance McLaughlin. Holyoke, Massachusetts: a Case History of the Industrial
Revolution in America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1939.
Guillet, Gail Travis, Mary Ellen W. Hem and Bruce Kelly. Art of the Olmsted Landscape.
New York: New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission and The Arts
Publisher, Inc., 1981.
146
Harwood, Herbert H., Jr. "Philadelphia's Victorian Suburban Stations," Railway History
Monograph. Crete, Nebraska: J-B Publishing Company, 1975.
Hartford, William F. Working People ofHolvoke: Class and Ethnicity in a Massachusetts
Mill Town, IS5()-I960. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990.
Hinchliffe, Elizabeth. Five Pounds Currency, Three Pounds of Corn: Wellesley's
Centennial Story. Town of Wellesley, Massachusetts, 1981.
Hitchcock, Henr>'-Russell. The Architecture ofH. H. Richardson and His Times. New
York: The Museum of Modem Art, 1936.
Houghton, Walter Edwards. The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830-1870. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1957.
Jackson, Kenneth T. Crahgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. New
York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1972
Kauvar, Gerald B. and Gerald C. Sorensen, editors. The Victorian Mind. New York:
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1969.
Kern, Stephen. The Culture of Titne and Space: 1880-1918. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1983.
Komwolf, James D. "American Architecture and the Aesthetic Movement" in In Pursuit of
Beaurv: Americans and the Aesthetic Movement. New York: Metropolitan Museum
of Art, 1986.
Lx)we, Donald M. History of Bourgeois Perception. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1982.
MacKenzie, John M. and Jeffrey Richards. The Railway Station: A Social History.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Mott, Frank Luther. A History of American Magazines, Volumes I-IV: 1741-1968.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1957,
1968.
Meeks, Carroll L.V. The Railroad Station: An Architectural History. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1956.
Mumford, Lewis. The Brown Decades: A Study of the Arts in America 1865-1895. New
York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1931.
Mumford, Lewis. Sticks and Stones. New York: Horace Liveright, 1924 (Revised
edition, 1955.)
Newton Tricentennial Corporation. Newton Massachusetts 1688-1988. Newton,
Massachusetts: 1988.
147
Oakes Ames Memorial Hall Association and Easton Historical Society. The Architecture of
Henrx Hohson Richardson al North Easton, Massachusetts. North Easton: 1969.
Ochsner, Jeffrey Kari. //.//. Richardson: Complete Archiectural Works. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1982.
O'Gorman, James F. H.H. Richardson and His Office: Selected Drawings. Boston:
Harvard University F*ress, 1974.
O'Gorman. James F. H. H. Richardson: Architectural Forms for an American Society.
Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
O'Gorman, James F., editor. Around the Station: The Town and the Train. Framingham,
Massachusetts: Danforth Museum Exhibition Catalog, 1978.
Pictorial Pabner. Palmer, Massachusetts: Carpenter and Cady Publishers, 1896.
Roth, Leland M. A Concise Historv of Amercian Architecture. New York: Harper and
Row, 1979.
Ruskin, John. The Seven Lamps of Architecture. New York: Dover F*ublications.
Reprint of Second Edition, 1880.
Schi velbusch, Wolfgang. 77?^ Railway Journey : Trains and Travel in the 19th Century.
New York : Urizen Books, 1979.
Scully, Vincent J., Jr. TTie Shingle Style and the Stick Style: Architectural Theory and
Design from Richardson to the Origins of Wright. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1955 Revised edition, 1974.
South Framingham Illustrated, Fourteen Views. New York: Lithotype Printing Company,
n.d.
Stevenson, Elizabeth. Park Maker: A Life of Frederick Law Olmsted. New York:
Macmillan, 1977.
Stilgoe, John R. Borderland: Origins of the American Suburb, 1820-1939. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1988.
Stilgoe, John R. Metropolitan Corridor: Railroads and the American Scene. New Haven:
Yale Unviersity Press, 1983.
Stover, John F. The Life and Decline of the American Railroad. New York: Oxford
University F*ress, 1970.
Sweetser, Moses Foster, editor. King's Handbook of Newton. Boston: Moses King,
1889.
Tager, Jack and John W. Ifkovic, editors. Massachusetts in the Gilded Age: Selected
Essays. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1985.
148
Temple. History of the Town of Palmer, Massachusetts. Massachusetts: 1889.
Temple, J.H. History of Fra/fiini^ham, Massachusetts, Early known as Danforth 'i Farms,
J640-JHm. the Town of Framinham: 1887.
Van Rensselaer, Marianna Griswold. Henry Hohson Richardson and His Works. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1888.
Warner, Sam Bass, Jr. Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston, I870-19(X).
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press and The M.I.T. Press, 1962.
JOURNALS & MAGAZINES
Arnold, Frank Atkinson. "A Study in Railroad Gardening." Suburban Life May 1905:
22.
"Boston & Albany." Railroad Gazette 1 April 1887.
Brown, Robert F. "The Aesthetic Transformation of an Industrial Community."
Winterthur Portfolio 12 1977:35-64.
Chicanot, E. L. "Beautifying a Railroad System." Landscape Architect 15, 191 1: 185-
194.
Gilbert, Bradford Lee. "Picturesque Suburban Railroad Stations." Engineering Magazine
December 1891: 336.
Hale, Jonathan. "Sic Transit." Architectural Forum 140 November 1973: 80-81.
Homolka, Larry J. "Richardson's North Easton." Architectural Forum 124 May 1966:
72-77.
Meeks, Carroll. "Romanesque before Richardson in the United States." The Art Bulletin
25 March 1953: 17-33.
O'Gorman, James F. "O.W. Norcross, Richardson's 'Master Builder'." Journal of the
Society of Architectural Historians 32 1 973 : 1 04- 11 3 .
O'Gorman, James F. "On Vacation with H. H. Richardson: Ten Letters from Europe,
\SS2." Archives of American Art Journal 19 1979:2-14.
O'Gorman, James F. "Documentation: An 1886 Inventory of H. H. Richardson's
Library, and Other Gleanings from Probate." Journal of the Society of
Architectural Historians 4\ May 1982: 150-55.
Ochsner, Jeffrey Karl. "Architecture for the Boston & Albany Railroad: 1881-1894."
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians XLVII June 1988: 109-131.
Parson, Samuel. "Railway, Church-Yard, and Cemetery Lawn-Planting." Scribner's
Monthly 22 July 1 88 1 : 4 1 5-4 1 9
149
Phillips, J. H. "The Evolution of the Suburban Station." Architectural Record 36 August
1914: 122-127.
"Plans for Chestnut Hill, Holyoke and Aubumdale." Sanitary Engineer Volume 14 14
October 1886.
"Railway Stations at Wellesley Hills, Waban, Woodlands, Aubumdale, Brighton, South
Framingham, Palmer, Holyoke and North Easton, Mass." American Architecture
and Building News 21 2 February 1887: 103.
Robinson, Charles Mulford Robinson. "Suburban Station Grounds." House and Garden
5 April 1904: 182-187.
Robinson, Chades Mulford. "A Railroad Beautiful." House and Garden 2 November
1902:564-570.
Sargent, Charles Sprague. "The Railroad Station at Chestnut Hill." Garden and Forest II
3 April 1889: 159-160.
Sargent, Charles Sprague. "The Railroad Station at Aubumdale, Massachusetts." Garden
and Forest II 13 March 1889: 124-125.
"Station of the Boston & Albany R.R., Chestnut Hill, Mass." American Architecture and
Building News 16 13 December 1884: 284.
"Stations on the Boston & Albany and The Connecticut River Railroads." Railroad Gazette
5 November 1886.
NEWSPAPERS
"South Framingham Still Growing." The Framingham Tribune 20 July 1888.
"A Model Prison." The Framingham Tribune 13 July 1888.
"The New Depot in Brighton." The Newton Graphic 18 July 1885.
"Boston and Albany Railroad." The Newton Graphic 29 August 1885.
"The Circuit Railroad." The Newton Graphic 15 May 1886.
"The Circuit Road." The Newton Graphic 22 May 1886.
"Waban Station." The Newton Graphic 29 May 1886.
"Waban." The Newton Graphic 1 1 September 1886.
"Discouraging Railroad Travel." The Newton Graphic 2 October 1886.
150
"The Suburban Resident." The Newton Graphic 2 April 1887.
"What does Newton want most?" The Newton Graphic 23 April 1887
"The Eliot Depot." The Newton Graphic 27 August 1887.
"Aubumdale's Attractions." The Newton Graphic 6 January 1888.
"Praise for New Stations." The Newton Graphic 27 January 1888.
"Waban." The Newton Graphic 9 March 1888.
"Pictures of New Stations." The Newton Graphic 6 May 1904.
"The Newton Circuit Railroad." The Newton Journal 15 May 1886
"Station at Chestnut Hill, Boston and Albany Railroad." The Newton Journal 19 October
1888.
"A Railroad Beautiful." The Newton Journal 13 March 1903.
"Newton: The Garden City of New England" The Newton Republican 14 May 1881.
"The New Railroad to Boston." The Wellesley Courant 5 November 1885.
THESES & DISSERTATIONS
Ellis, Susan Elizabeth. "'The Route of Scenic Charm': A Case Study of the Delaware,
Lackawanna, and Western Railroad in the American Landscape, 1880-1940"
University of Pennsylvania's Masters Thesis, 1990.
Homolka, Larry J. "Henry Hobson Richardson and the "Ames Memorial Buildings'"
Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1976.
MAPS & ATLASES
Atlas of the City of Boston; Charlestown and Brighton, Volume 6. Philadelphia: Geo. W.
& Walter S. Bromley, 1885. Harvard University.
Atlas of the City of Newton. Wards 9, 10, 12, 20. Philadelphia: Geo.W. & Walter S.
Bromley, 1895. Harvard University.
Barnes & Jenks Atlas of Framingham, Massachusetts. Pittsfield Massachusetts: Jas.P.
Beime, 1895. Framingham Public Library.
Map of Boston and the Country Adjacent. Boston: Damrell & Upham, 1889. Harvard
University.
151
Map of the Railroads of the State of Massachusetts. Boston: J.H. Buffords Sons, 1880.
Harvard University.
Outline Map of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with populations in IHHO. Rand
Avery & Company, 1882. Harvard University.
Robinson's Atlas of Norfolk County. Wellesley Hills, Plate 35. New York: 1888.
Wellesley Free Library.
Topographical Atlas, County of Hampden, Massachusetts. Palmer and Holyoke.
Springfield Massachusetts: L.J. Richards & Co, 1894. Palmer Public Library.
1880's map of Holyoke. Holyoke Public Libary.
LIBRARIES / RESOURCES
Boston Public Library
Fisher Hne Arts Library, University of Pennsylvania
Framingham Public Library
Free Library of Philadelphia
Harvard Map Collection, Harvard University
Holyoke F*ublic Library
Newton Historical Society
Newton Free Library
Olmsted National Historic Site
Palmer Public Library
Wellesley Free Library
152
Anne & Jerome Fisher
FINE ARTS LIBRARY
University of Pennsylvania
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